[Note: this is a long and sordid tale posted a long long time ago to the long-lost site of Epinions.com. I'm reposting here just to have a linkable copy to refer people to rather than waste neurons and sanity trying to recount it all fresh every time the topic comes up. No need to pick at scabs.
[Originally posted by: AggieBrett (Tue Jun 20 '00)
I stumbled across an Epinion of Amtrak travel and then was stunned – stunned -- to see more than a few positive reviews of Amtrak.
You see, I foolishly chose Amtrak once.
Once.
Back around 1992 some friends and I all decided to travel to LA so we could watch the Aggies (Texas A&M) play Stanford in the Disney Pigskin Classic Football Thing Bowl (Aggies won, whooooop!). We saw an ad for Amtrak and how favorably it compared to air travel in terms of pricing. We looked through the snazzy Amtrak brochures. Saw lots of smiling people resting in comfort on big reclining seats. People sleeping peacefully (again -- smiling) in nice big berths in sleeper rooms. Families smiling through large windows at breathtaking scenery. Couples smiling at one another as they enjoyed a good-looking meal ("prepared by chefs trained at the Culinary Institute of America" as the brochure described it).
Sure, it was going to take 2 days to go from Houston to LA, but what the heck -- it would be an adventure.
Surprise #1-- The snazzy Amtrak brochures showed people (smiling, of course) resting and reading and riding comfortably on the big reclining seats, and these seats could be had for roughly the same cost as airline tickets for the same route. When we asked about the sleeper rooms, we discovered that sleeping accommodations on Amtrak cost approximately as much as a well-used sedan. THOUSANDS of dollars.
Surprise #2-- the train arrived three hours late for departure, meaning we were sitting around the downtown train station (imagine a bus-stop with slightly less warmth and charm) until near 11 PM. Little did we know at the time, but this delay would be the high-water mark for Amtrak punctuality on our trip.
Surprise #3-- all the smiling people in the brochure had apparently elected to take other conveyances, 'cuz there were NO smiling faces on the train we boarded. The A/C seemed to either be not working or not turned on. There were people dragging FEEDSACKS full of belongings down the aisles, including one large shirtless man who had an ancient Hoover upright tossed over one shoulder and an Igloo Playmate cooler in the other hand. I kept expecting to see someone stuffing a wooden cage filled with chickens into an overhead bin.
Surprise #4-- the conductor gave us the Amtrak welcome by explaining over the microphone that (and this is as close to an actual quote as I can recall) "I ain't here to pick up after you people. The pockets on the back of the seat are NOT for trash, and if you stop up one of the toilets, I'm NOT fixing it, so be careful about how much paper you toss in there. The snack car closes in ten minutes, so if you want something you better move now or be ready to wait until breakfast." And then he left the car without further comment.
Surprise #5-- the comfy looking recliners from the brochures had apparently been replaced with extension ladders covered in old carpet. I am not an overly large man -- six feet tall -- yet my feet would wedge under the seat in front of me, meaning I was unable to recline on the seat without turning sideways into a fetal position with my back twisted up at a 30 degree angle. Try sleeping that way for two days in 80 degree heat.
Surprise #6-- the train pulled over on a siding in San Antonio in the middle of the night (3 am?), ALL power was turned off (including the ventilation fans) and then we just sat there with no explanation for 90 minutes or so, sweating in the silence.
Surprise #7-- those "CIA-trained" chefs apparently concentrated their training on how to over-microwave vending machine sandwiches. Six dollars and a twenty minute wait for a gray rubber chicken sandwich that was literally still inside the plastic bag when served. We all agreed that cold pork&beans from the can would have been more appetizing than anything we were served on the train.
Surprise #8-- the observation car is basically useless for observing since it looks like a refugee train due to all the people (obviously repeat Amtrak victims) who have turned the floor of that car into a huge campground, complete with sleeping bags, bags of groceries, and piles of games and books. It was almost impossible to walk to the snack car without hopping carefully over at least a few snoring lumps.
Surprise #9-- the snack car is the only smoking car on the train. I'm not a smoker, but in order to get a soda or a two-dollar bag of smokehouse almonds I had to hold my breathe and dive into a room choked with gray smoke. The snack bar, by the way, is ALSO where the TV-VCR is, so if you travel Amtrak with kids and hope to let them kill an hour or so with a movie, you have to leave them hanging in the smokehouse like bacon to be cured.
Surprise #10-- somewhere outside Tucson one of our fellow travelers suffered a stroke. He was obviously dying before our very eyes, yet the only response from the Amtrak employees was stop the train and to tell people to stand back and leave him alone. My wife, an ICU nurse, immediately jumped in to assist the man, and my party ended up administering CPR and mouth-to-mouth for 20 minutes until paramedics arrived. They had to strap the man to a board and then drag him down the narrow spiral staircase that is the only access to the upstairs seating area. As soon as the man and his wife were removed, the train resumed its journey westward. No Amtrak representative ever said a word to anyone in my party -- no "thanks for trying to save our passenger" or "would you like a towel to wipe off the vomit from that poor convulsing man" or even "man -- that was scary, huh?" Nothing.
Surprise #11-- we arrived at LA some TEN hours late, meaning that our first day in LA was already shot, and the other friends (who had wisely FLOWN in) had wasted half their day waiting for a train that wasn't coming. Again, no comment or apology from Amtrak.
Surprise #12-- after spending several days in SoCal, it was time to get BACK on the train for the trip home. We were literally IN TEARS at the thought of repeating that experience, but we found that Amtrak would only refund 40 dollars of the 220-dollar fare if we canceled, and that plane travel would cost us 200 dollars each on such short notice. SO we trudged back to the train, this time making sure to stock up on groceries and sleeping pills so as to be better prepared for the rolling shipwreck before us.
Again, the train was late in arriving, and this time we sat in the motionless train in the LA switchyards for four hours with no explanation. When we finally got an Amtrak employee to explain what was going on, we were told that we'd be waiting for a few MORE hours to hook up with a train coming down from Seattle. It was 2 am and we snapped. We demanded our luggage. The Amtrak people tried to talk us down, but we were past the point of listening. We got off the train (amidst a car full of cheers from folks who sympathized with the agony), ran back to the station and demanded our damned 40 dollars. When the clerk asked if we wanted that refund "in cash or in vouchers for future Amtrak travel," I thought one of my traveling companions was about to crash through that bulletproof window and throttle the poor woman.
We loaded what luggage we had collected into a cab, drove to LAX, slept on the floor of the terminal and grabbed the first available flight to Houston. When we heard the airline captain apologize for running three minutes behind schedule (THREE MINUTES!), we laughed at our earlier folly.
We later learned that the train BACK to Houston had been delayed until past dawn, and that it arrived in Houston some 18 hours late.
Despite numerous letters and complaints to every Amtrak office and official that I could track down over the course of the next year or so, we never did get anything more than the 40 dollar refund. We did find out that that poor man had in fact died later that night in Tucson. The trip has become somewhat legendary among our friends, and we still get requests to tell the horrific story of our Amtrak Trip From Hell.
That Amtrak trip ranks as the absolute WORST travel experience I have ever had the gross misfortune to experience. I would rather be dragged behind a low-flying blimp than to ever travel by Amtrak. I'd rather be repeatedly fired from a cannon to travel. Amtrak makes bus travel seem luxurious. Given a choice of Amtrak or not traveling at all, my recommendation would be to stay home.
As we actually told a man who was complaining about a missed flight at LAX: "Dude, it's better to miss a plane than to take the train."
just another online spittoon
12 November 2022
16 October 2022
First Ten Verbs (Oct 2022 edition)
A propos of nuthin much, here's a repeat of an old exercise for the writers out there:
The task is simple: open your current/newest writing project and then list the FIRST TEN VERBS which appear in that project.
I learned this trick/game back in college when a writing prof was trying to drive home the point of active aggressive forceful writing versus limp and lazy passive writing. If you do this and find yourself listing a bunch of "is" and "are" and "seems" and such, maybe it's time to go back and turn up the heat and add a bit more sizzle.
I have a new project I just started toying with, and as usual I like to scribble out an opening and closing scene to help me nail the tone and the possible trajectory of the story. I have a handful of opening pages done, and here are the first ten verbs (so far):
flickers
brightens
grows
moves
looks
screams
turns
pass
gleams
streak
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Yes, it's a silly simple trick, but it's fun and sometimes useful to help show you if you are writing flaccid lazy passive prose.
Try it. Or don't. Your nickel.
The task is simple: open your current/newest writing project and then list the FIRST TEN VERBS which appear in that project.
I learned this trick/game back in college when a writing prof was trying to drive home the point of active aggressive forceful writing versus limp and lazy passive writing. If you do this and find yourself listing a bunch of "is" and "are" and "seems" and such, maybe it's time to go back and turn up the heat and add a bit more sizzle.
I have a new project I just started toying with, and as usual I like to scribble out an opening and closing scene to help me nail the tone and the possible trajectory of the story. I have a handful of opening pages done, and here are the first ten verbs (so far):
flickers
brightens
grows
moves
looks
screams
turns
pass
gleams
streak
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Yes, it's a silly simple trick, but it's fun and sometimes useful to help show you if you are writing flaccid lazy passive prose.
Try it. Or don't. Your nickel.
26 October 2021
Austin Film Fest 2021 (#AFF29) as a blur
Cresting 71W at Del Valle at 91mph, Austin an Emerald City on the bright horizon… “my flight’s delayed!” -- “meet you there!”… rolling into the SFA yet again… HELLO, DRISKILL… finally meeting up with Salvador… “love you man”… “BRETT— THAT WAS SHANE BLACK YOU JUST HUGGED! HE WROTE LETHAL WEAPON!” “Yeah. I know.”… beer thirty… when the bartender recognizes you from the last 15 years… “Wait— your name is Talon?” Bill! Alvaro! “BRETT— THAT WAS ASHLEY MILLER YOU JUST HUGGED! HE WROTE THOR!” “Yeah. I know.”… mmmm pork belly tacos… “how do you pick which toy to play with?” “Oh, it’s a challenge. Speaking of which—”
*** OMFG ***
“Yes yes yes a thousand times yes”… Dawn of the Dirty Goose... missing Shawna… “You brought tequila? Should we have a night cap?” “Why do you think I brought the tequila?”… I only came here to touch Sean’s hair… John Z! “I’ll talk to you in a few, John…” … those were some panels, Walter… shut the fuck up… Return of the Dirty Goose… “wait— you’re THE Brett?” WTF… “You’re not what I expected— and in a good way.” WTF… beer thirty… “did everyone ELSE advance this year? SHIT!”… “where’s the aviator helmet?”… Nadia, the cool chick from 9-1-1 … Vivi!… Beck & Woods...“Brett, we are out of tequila.” “So pick a different bottle.” “Hmmm… bourbon for a nightcap?” “Sure why not.”… Ashley and Palomas and Branagh oh my… “Did I ever tell you about…?”… beer thirty… “This band is great and I’d pay them to go away”…The Gorgeous Girl With The Green Eyes (sigh)… “I’ve not been drunk on a school bus since fourth grade”… “You’re THAT Brett?” “What— are you writing a book?”… Jason! Nick! David! Stacey!“What the hell is an “ethnographer’ anyway?”… The Gorgeous Girl With The Green Eyes (sigh)… “Looks like we’re walkin” … Dirty Sixth… street pizza sans Muay Thai… “I think we just lost Jason”… “OK, so the way this works is…”
*** OMFG ***
“Do we care for a nightcap?” “Oh, I think we do.”… “We are! We ARE good looking guys!”… Velvet Taco… Charles!… The Shane Black Experience Pt1… Missing Julie… “You look like you were fired out of a cannon. In a good way.” WTF … Javi! “BRETT— THAT WAS JAVIER GRILLO-MARXUACH YOU JUST FIST BUMPED! HE WROTE LOST!” “Yeah. I know.” Revenge of the Dirty Goose… “you’re like, ‘how do I kill the bunny?’ And you have these claws…” beer thirty… mmmm, tacos… John Z! “Can’t talk right now, John— I’ll find you…”… “Hi— I’m here for my free booze, please…” Aggies curbstomp Carolina… The Gorgeous Girl With The Green Eyes (sigh)…“Are you alive? Please confirm.”… Heidi!… ASTROS GOIN TO THE SERIES, BAYBEE… “I’M DRUNKER THAN I HAVE EVER BEEN IN MY LIFE AND I DO NOT KNOW WHERE I AM!” “Read the coaster to me, bro”… F1 Women wear tight pants… The Rescue At Aloft… “If HE likes you, that’s good enough. Send ME something.” “Same here. Send me something.”
*** OMFG ***
“You brought more than one bottle of bourbon?” “Of course. Always be prepared.” “Nightcap?”… Salvador leaves in the night… misty morning march to hair of the dog… mmmm, tacos… Kim!… “Wait— are you… Aggiebrett? I overheard a comment and it sounds like something Aggiebrett would post...” WTF … “Do you have any more Sean stickers?” The Shane Black Experience Pt 2… How many Melissas ARE there? … Dulce!… Dirty Goose: The Final Insult … “Are we alive?”… “I got so drunk I think I drank myself sober. It’s a little startling.”… beer thirty... “Big fan. For a long time. Still am. But very no.”Lauren and David and Bosley and oysters oh my… “You have my contact info?” … “my flight’s delayed-- I shoulda hung around”… mmmm, tacos… The Gorgeous Girl With The Green Eyes (sigh)… “Oh, we’re gonna talk.”
*** OMFG ***
“You should sell t-shirts. I’d buy one”… “As a writer, I think ‘bidding war’ are the sexiest words I know”… Kim and Heidi and Kristen on the wind down…” blackberry old fashioned… The Gorgeous Girl With The Green Eyes (sigh)… one more street slice still sans Muay Thai… beer thirty… “this band is also nice and I’d still pay them to go away” … “my flight’s delayed-- I shoulda hung around” … the final crossing… final nightcap alone as I stare out the window and jot down impressions and sort through notes in the Moleskine… wake up, pack it in, haul it down, head on out… just as “Find Your Way Back” cranks on the random playlist.
Well played, Universe.
Windows down. Volume up.
MOBILE. AGILE. HOSTILE.
You stand warned, #AFF29.
21 March 2020
Nate & Hayes: The Weirdest Pirate Movie Nobody Remembers
[note: originally written/posted back around 2002 on epinions.com, but re-embalmed here for posterity.]
---
After the way my boys responded to Pirates of the Caribbean earlier this week at the local super-mega-omni-hyperplex, I figured that maybe it was a good time to take a break from our standard "Mom's-working-so-it's-bad-sci-fi-rental-night" Friday tradition and look instead for something in a more swashbuckling vein. The local vid-rental shack was stocked to the rafters with obscene dozens of copies of hideously uninteresting new releases, yet I could not find a single decent pirate movie on DVD. And then suddenly I had the urge to look for a specific title that I knew-- I just knew-- would be there in dusty ignored VHS format. So I wandered over to the sad "tape" side of the store, looked in the "Action" titles and found just what I was looking for: Nate & Hayes, one of the strangest and most forgotten movies from the 80s, a decade known for some odd flicks.
How weird is it? Weird enough that when I slapped the tape down at the register to check it out, the normally jaded counter-weasel glanced at it, did a double take, gazed at the cover art for a good ten seconds, then flipped it over and started reading the back of the box for details.
"Is there a problem?" I finally asked, after I'd been standing there watching him read for fifteen seconds.
"Where did you get this?" He seemed stunned.
"Right back there in the action titles. It's an old movie-- made something like twenty years ago."
"I see that, but I've worked here for a year and a half. I thought I'd seen almost every movie in this store, but I've never even heard of this one!"
"Yeah, it's kinda forgotten. It's weird that way."
Nate & Hayes is weird in a lot of ways.
It's weird because it's a classic traditional pirate movie, yet there's never a parrot nor a "skull and crossbones" nor any gold nor anyone with an eye patch nor very many of the classic pirate elements and cliches.
It's weird because it was written by John Hughes. Yes, that John Hughes-- the Home Alone and Breakfast Club and Weird Science guy, the master of the 80s teen comedy. In fact, right after this flick Hughes went on to write Sixteen Candles, one of the crowning achievements of Western culture from the period circa 1983-1987.
It's weird because it stars Michael O'Keefe, best known-- hell, exclusively known-- for his epic turn as "Danny Noonan" in Caddyshack.
But certainly weirdest-- and most wonderful-- of all is the fact that the main character in the movie, pirate "Captain 'Bully' Hayes," is played by one Tommie Lee Jones.
First released theatrically in 1983, Nate & Hayes was cursed by one of the worst titles in modern history, no doubt explaining why it was noticed and remembered by approximately 17 people worldwide. I have yet to meet anyone else who instantly remembers this movie when I mention it. When I start to describe the movie, the most common reaction is similar to that of the video clerk-- "You're making this up, right? There's no way I'd NOT remember Tommie Lee Jones in a pirate movie!". I myself recall discovering on cable TV a year or so after its theatrical release, and I can clearly remember thinking aloud "Jones is a strange choice for a pirate."
Why strange? Because Tommie Lee plays it just as you might imagine. It's almost as loopily surreal as the skit on Saturday Night Live in which Kevin Spacey spoofs missing screentests for Star Wars and shows us Christopher Walken as Han Solo, and Walter Matthau as Obi Wan. In much the same way here, we see a well-known-- almost self-parodying-- screen presence playing a role where he seems almost comically cast against type. Yeah, Jones dresses the part, wearing white pants tucked into tall pirate boots, and yeah he has a poofy pirate shirt open to the navel in most scenes, and yeah he has slightly long ragged hair and a scruffy beard (giving the weird effect of making him look a lot like singer Travis Tritt in many scenes), but no matter if he's buckling swash in a cutlass battle against a German naval officer or swinging buccaneer-style from a rope to board a captured vessel or dodging native spears or taking aim down a big pirate-looking muzzle-load pistol drawn from the sash tied round his waist or waving to familiar folks as he strides confidently into a seedy seaport pirate tavern, he's always plain old Texas-born Tommie Lee, just grinnin' and gabbin' and droppin' his final "g's" like any good old boy from San Saba, Texas. He's in a pirate movie, but he's basically the same character as "Captain Call" in Lonesome Dove-- "a man of vision? Yeah, a HELL of a vision."
Simply put, the idea of Tommie Lee Jones as a pirate is totally weird and completely bass-ackwards, yet somehow, it works.
Told in flashback narrative form to a reporter as Hayes awaits a date with the gallows, Hayes reflects back upon how he was contracted to transport comically stiff young missionary Nathaniel (O'Keefe) and his fiancee Sophie (beautiful Jenny Seagrove), then is forced to hunt down former business partner Ben Pease who is now falsely using his name to spread terror throughout the South Pacific. When Pease raids the missionary camp where Nathaniel and Jenny are (literally) walking down the aisle, he leaves Nate for dead but kidnaps the virginal Jenny for use in a vague scheme to help the Kaiser's navy get anchorage rights from a cannibal chieftain (don't sweat it-- it's all over too quick to care). Nate and Hayes quickly join forces to track down their common nemesis, and a series of laughably convenient and easily-arranged confrontations leads to an overly long and not especially rousing premature conclusion on the deck of an exploding German ironclad, which then leads directly to a laughably easy escape for Hayes on the gallows (eerily reminiscent of a similar scene in the infinitely superior Pirates of the Caribbean, actually), and then everyone first gallops, then sails off into the sunset (literally) as the credits roll and the soundtrack rollicks.
The story is childishly thin, painfully predictable, and downright absurd throughout. The acting is generally only just competent at best, more often drifting into low grade camp. The action sequences and effects seem fairly lame, obviously staged and poorly rehearsed. The Trevor Jones soundtrack seems to have only two basic themes: a nervous tense "something is about to jump out and startle you" theme and then a rolling rollicking "oh isn't it romantic and fun to be a prate" theme, and both themes are alternated and played pretty much constantly throughout, at once both boring and distracting the viewer. Most of the scenery and sets are remarkably unremarkable, especially given the fact that the movie was filmed on location in Fiji and New Zealand. O'Keefe proves that his Caddyshack performance was no fluke (he's clumsily bad both there and here), Seagrove looks beautiful (as she did in the wonderful Local Hero film the year before) but doesn't really "do" anything onscreen aside from look good, and evil pirate "Ben Pease" casued me more than a few chuckles for seeming to be an absolute clone of Lee Van Cleef in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Basically, it's not surprising that so few people seem to recall this movie as there's no truly compelling reason to remember from the 80s or to bother watching it now.
Except for the presence of Tommie Lee Jones, that is. Somehow, Jones manages to haul this under-inflated mildew-stained surplus-store rubber raft of a movie onto his back and then simply refuses to not let you enjoy it. Even while everything else on screen is fighting (clumsily) to put you to sleep or at least make you look for a magazine to read until the credits roll, Jones just keeps giggling and leering and cackling like... well, like a grown up kid having one helluva time playing pirates. He just has so much fun in this awful movie that you wind up forgiving almost every flaw and shortcoming.
So I have a hard time trying to figure out just how to "score" this movie. For everything other than Tommie, I'd give this movie maybe 1.5 stars-- it's not absolutely dreadful, but neither is it especially good. But for scene-stealing Tommie Lee, I give at least 4 stars, yielding my overall 3-star rating.
My boys? They laughed. They clapped. They cheered when Tommie Lee saved the day and they seemed anxious when he seemed in peril, and as the end titles rolled ("theme #2-- 'Rollicking Pirates'"), they both asked me "Daddy, did we rent this, or did we buy it?"
"We rented it. Why?"
"Cuz I wish we bought it. I liked it."
As Tommie Lee might say, "Seems good enough for me, darlin'."
---
After the way my boys responded to Pirates of the Caribbean earlier this week at the local super-mega-omni-hyperplex, I figured that maybe it was a good time to take a break from our standard "Mom's-working-so-it's-bad-sci-fi-rental-night" Friday tradition and look instead for something in a more swashbuckling vein. The local vid-rental shack was stocked to the rafters with obscene dozens of copies of hideously uninteresting new releases, yet I could not find a single decent pirate movie on DVD. And then suddenly I had the urge to look for a specific title that I knew-- I just knew-- would be there in dusty ignored VHS format. So I wandered over to the sad "tape" side of the store, looked in the "Action" titles and found just what I was looking for: Nate & Hayes, one of the strangest and most forgotten movies from the 80s, a decade known for some odd flicks.
How weird is it? Weird enough that when I slapped the tape down at the register to check it out, the normally jaded counter-weasel glanced at it, did a double take, gazed at the cover art for a good ten seconds, then flipped it over and started reading the back of the box for details.
"Is there a problem?" I finally asked, after I'd been standing there watching him read for fifteen seconds.
"Where did you get this?" He seemed stunned.
"Right back there in the action titles. It's an old movie-- made something like twenty years ago."
"I see that, but I've worked here for a year and a half. I thought I'd seen almost every movie in this store, but I've never even heard of this one!"
"Yeah, it's kinda forgotten. It's weird that way."
Nate & Hayes is weird in a lot of ways.
It's weird because it's a classic traditional pirate movie, yet there's never a parrot nor a "skull and crossbones" nor any gold nor anyone with an eye patch nor very many of the classic pirate elements and cliches.
It's weird because it was written by John Hughes. Yes, that John Hughes-- the Home Alone and Breakfast Club and Weird Science guy, the master of the 80s teen comedy. In fact, right after this flick Hughes went on to write Sixteen Candles, one of the crowning achievements of Western culture from the period circa 1983-1987.
It's weird because it stars Michael O'Keefe, best known-- hell, exclusively known-- for his epic turn as "Danny Noonan" in Caddyshack.
But certainly weirdest-- and most wonderful-- of all is the fact that the main character in the movie, pirate "Captain 'Bully' Hayes," is played by one Tommie Lee Jones.
First released theatrically in 1983, Nate & Hayes was cursed by one of the worst titles in modern history, no doubt explaining why it was noticed and remembered by approximately 17 people worldwide. I have yet to meet anyone else who instantly remembers this movie when I mention it. When I start to describe the movie, the most common reaction is similar to that of the video clerk-- "You're making this up, right? There's no way I'd NOT remember Tommie Lee Jones in a pirate movie!". I myself recall discovering on cable TV a year or so after its theatrical release, and I can clearly remember thinking aloud "Jones is a strange choice for a pirate."
Why strange? Because Tommie Lee plays it just as you might imagine. It's almost as loopily surreal as the skit on Saturday Night Live in which Kevin Spacey spoofs missing screentests for Star Wars and shows us Christopher Walken as Han Solo, and Walter Matthau as Obi Wan. In much the same way here, we see a well-known-- almost self-parodying-- screen presence playing a role where he seems almost comically cast against type. Yeah, Jones dresses the part, wearing white pants tucked into tall pirate boots, and yeah he has a poofy pirate shirt open to the navel in most scenes, and yeah he has slightly long ragged hair and a scruffy beard (giving the weird effect of making him look a lot like singer Travis Tritt in many scenes), but no matter if he's buckling swash in a cutlass battle against a German naval officer or swinging buccaneer-style from a rope to board a captured vessel or dodging native spears or taking aim down a big pirate-looking muzzle-load pistol drawn from the sash tied round his waist or waving to familiar folks as he strides confidently into a seedy seaport pirate tavern, he's always plain old Texas-born Tommie Lee, just grinnin' and gabbin' and droppin' his final "g's" like any good old boy from San Saba, Texas. He's in a pirate movie, but he's basically the same character as "Captain Call" in Lonesome Dove-- "a man of vision? Yeah, a HELL of a vision."
Simply put, the idea of Tommie Lee Jones as a pirate is totally weird and completely bass-ackwards, yet somehow, it works.
Told in flashback narrative form to a reporter as Hayes awaits a date with the gallows, Hayes reflects back upon how he was contracted to transport comically stiff young missionary Nathaniel (O'Keefe) and his fiancee Sophie (beautiful Jenny Seagrove), then is forced to hunt down former business partner Ben Pease who is now falsely using his name to spread terror throughout the South Pacific. When Pease raids the missionary camp where Nathaniel and Jenny are (literally) walking down the aisle, he leaves Nate for dead but kidnaps the virginal Jenny for use in a vague scheme to help the Kaiser's navy get anchorage rights from a cannibal chieftain (don't sweat it-- it's all over too quick to care). Nate and Hayes quickly join forces to track down their common nemesis, and a series of laughably convenient and easily-arranged confrontations leads to an overly long and not especially rousing premature conclusion on the deck of an exploding German ironclad, which then leads directly to a laughably easy escape for Hayes on the gallows (eerily reminiscent of a similar scene in the infinitely superior Pirates of the Caribbean, actually), and then everyone first gallops, then sails off into the sunset (literally) as the credits roll and the soundtrack rollicks.
The story is childishly thin, painfully predictable, and downright absurd throughout. The acting is generally only just competent at best, more often drifting into low grade camp. The action sequences and effects seem fairly lame, obviously staged and poorly rehearsed. The Trevor Jones soundtrack seems to have only two basic themes: a nervous tense "something is about to jump out and startle you" theme and then a rolling rollicking "oh isn't it romantic and fun to be a prate" theme, and both themes are alternated and played pretty much constantly throughout, at once both boring and distracting the viewer. Most of the scenery and sets are remarkably unremarkable, especially given the fact that the movie was filmed on location in Fiji and New Zealand. O'Keefe proves that his Caddyshack performance was no fluke (he's clumsily bad both there and here), Seagrove looks beautiful (as she did in the wonderful Local Hero film the year before) but doesn't really "do" anything onscreen aside from look good, and evil pirate "Ben Pease" casued me more than a few chuckles for seeming to be an absolute clone of Lee Van Cleef in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Basically, it's not surprising that so few people seem to recall this movie as there's no truly compelling reason to remember from the 80s or to bother watching it now.
Except for the presence of Tommie Lee Jones, that is. Somehow, Jones manages to haul this under-inflated mildew-stained surplus-store rubber raft of a movie onto his back and then simply refuses to not let you enjoy it. Even while everything else on screen is fighting (clumsily) to put you to sleep or at least make you look for a magazine to read until the credits roll, Jones just keeps giggling and leering and cackling like... well, like a grown up kid having one helluva time playing pirates. He just has so much fun in this awful movie that you wind up forgiving almost every flaw and shortcoming.
So I have a hard time trying to figure out just how to "score" this movie. For everything other than Tommie, I'd give this movie maybe 1.5 stars-- it's not absolutely dreadful, but neither is it especially good. But for scene-stealing Tommie Lee, I give at least 4 stars, yielding my overall 3-star rating.
My boys? They laughed. They clapped. They cheered when Tommie Lee saved the day and they seemed anxious when he seemed in peril, and as the end titles rolled ("theme #2-- 'Rollicking Pirates'"), they both asked me "Daddy, did we rent this, or did we buy it?"
"We rented it. Why?"
"Cuz I wish we bought it. I liked it."
As Tommie Lee might say, "Seems good enough for me, darlin'."
09 July 2018
The Aerosol Swiss Army Knife (The Great Groceries Write-Off)
[originally posted to epinions.com on 2001-05-01]
Subject: Groceries
Pros: Many groceries are very good.
Cons: Some groceries are not very good.
Summary: I have long been a user of groceries, and I recommend them highly.
Modern grocery stores are absolute marvels-- palaces of wonderfully wretched excess where you can find dozens of products for use in any specific situation. Need orange juice? Great-- they have "from concentrate," "not-from concentrate," with calcium, without, with extra A & C, with pulp, no-pulp, some pulp, all-pulp, different pulp.... Need bleach? They've got large, jumbo, mega, regular, lemon, rainfresh, concentrated, super-concentrated, absurdly concentrated.... You say you need apples? Well, there's Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Jonagold, Fuji, Granny Smith, McInstosh, Rome, Gala, Washington State apples, New Zealand Apples, home-schooled California free-range apples, all available in various size categories.
Being confronted with so many choices can lead to what author Douglas Coupland labeled "option paralysis"-- the tendency, when confronted by a near unlimited number of opportunities or possibilities, to choose nothing. Instead of getting just the right product for the need at hand, you wind up buying nothing, leaving all sorts of problems and needs unaddressed.
Which is why I am so excited to turn your valuable and harried attention to one of THE true marvels of this modern age, one product that will fill the bill for a dizzying variety of chores, a product whose many uses address so many different needs and situations that no trip to the store is complete until you've replenished your supply.
I am talking, of course, about the super-jumbo aerosol can of store-brand underarm deodorant.
What you say? "Are you high? It's just deodorant!"
Right, and beer is JUST a sports drink.
Of course, it's important that you buy the right brand of no-name deodorant spray. If you buy a name you trust and recognize, chances are you will talk yourself out of using the product in some of the scenarios I will describe. Your best bet is to buy the supremo-monstro canister of the most generic house brand offered-- sheer mass of product is the key. You want a can that looks roughly the size of a 40-millimeter shell casing. Remember-- "quantity has a quality all its own." Plus, a ten pound canister of the no-name stuff will be about 30% cheaper than any recognizable brand name. As for scent, if you buy the real deal-- the no name black can that has "suitable for use on humans" somewhere on the label in tiny type-- your pickings are likely slim when it comes to fragrance, and I'm pretty sure that "regular scented" is what you will wind up with, but fret not, gentle shopper: close enough is good enough in this game. In fact, it's probably best to AVOID any particular pleasing scent, since there's no telling where you'll end up where or how you'll end up using this miracle product. Why, consider just these few actual uses from my own past:
"Shower In A Can®"
While in college I and my roommates discovered that a jumbo canister of underarm deodorant can be an absolute life-saver when you happen to hit that snooze button 16 or 17 too many times in the morning. Picture this scenario: you oversleep, get up and realize that you have only 4 minutes to dress and get to class before the finals start. You understand all too well that you smell like a wet musk ox after a night in a cigar bar but you also know that sometimes there's just no time for hygiene... UNLESS you have the super-jumbo aerosol can of store-brand underarm deodorant. Simply grab your handy-dandy Shower In A Can, mist yourself from topnotch to toenail while grabbing a Pop-Tart from the cupboard, then sprint to class to ace that Biochem final and be one step closer to a fulfilling career in brain surgery.
"Room So Fresh®"
You come home after a hard day of Biochem Finals/sales presentations/margaritas by the pool and find a phone message from your parents alerting you that they're in town and stopping by to take you to dinner. You step into your dorm room/apartment/four-bedroom ranch style, realize that the place smells like a wet musk ox after a night in a cigar bar, and then notice the fact that your parents are due to arrive sometime in the next 90 seconds. You know that Dear Old Mom will come in sniffing and wincing, starting her standard finger-wagging lecture... UNLESS you have a super-jumbo aerosol can of store-brand underarm deodorant. Simply grab your handy-dandy Room So Fresh spray, sprint through the room while spraying the can overhead, kicking all the dirty clothes and empty beer cans into the bedroom, then answer the doorbell with a big warm smile.
"Insta-Laundry®"
You get back from dinner with the parents at Red Lobster and find another message saying that "everybody" will be meeting and such and such bar that evening and that you really ought to tag along since SHE'S going to be there and this is finally maybe your Big Chance. You bound into the closet and painfully remember that you meant to do laundry that afternoon (you were distracted by cleaning the apartment for the parents, remember?), meaning your cleanest shirt is whichever one that doesn't have palm-sized chili stains, the one that still hints slightly of a wet musk ox after a night in a cigar bar, meaning you're doomed to another night of "Hitler's Secret Arsenal" on The History Channel... UNLESS you have a super-jumbo aerosol can of store-brand underarm deodorant. Simply grab your handy-dandy Insta-Laundry spray, shake the Pringles from the pockets of the shirt and give it a quick spritz of manly scent, then head off to be completely ignored by the One True Woman Of Your Recent Dreams.
"Shoe-Nice®"
You stumble back home, broke and alone, heartbroken that SHE three times forgot your name, and you fall into bed, thinking for a moment that the place smells kinda fresh and sporty. You kick off your shoes, stumble to the bathroom for the nightly ablutions, then wander back to bed and suddenly realize that that earlier kinda fresh and sporty odor has been replaced with something that smells none too vaguely of a wet musk ox after a night in a cigar bar with a bag of corn ships served on the side. You realize that those two orders of Buffalo Wings in your tummy are not enjoying this odor, and both you and the wings will be bothered by the foul stench all night... UNLESS you have a super-jumbo aerosol can of store-brand underarm deodorant. Simply grab your handy-dandy Shoe-Nice spray, hold your breath as you roll over to snatch the sweaty Nike's, dash to the back porch/patio/garage, fumigate those bad boys but good, then wander back to bed to have strange garlic-fueled dreams.
"Bug-B-Gone®"
The next morning you roll out of bed at the crack of 9:30 AM and pad quietly into the kitchen for a healthy breakfast featuring a trough full of Wheaties and a half can of Mountain Dew you forget to put back in the fridge, but when you open your pantry door, you are confronted by a half dozen little brown intruders milling about on the floor of your pantry. You realize that you really ought to start living a little better, possibly picking up after yourself and exhibiting maybe the tiniest twinge of pride in your wardrobe, hygiene, and housing, but you also know that those are really big projects and the project at hand is more immediate and pressing and will quite likely scurry away to the back reaches of the pantry where they will again be ignored and forgotten... UNLESS you have a super-jumbo aerosol can of store-brand underarm deodorant. Simply grab your handy-dandy "Bug-B-Gone" off the corner of the counter (where you left it the night before while dealing with the corn chippy smell), let loose a fresh scented cloud of Insectoidal Death From On High with one hand while you reach in to retrieve the Wheaties box with the other, then wander off to consume a healthy sensible Breakfast of Champions while watching those BodyShaping chicks on ESPN2.
"Fung-O-Way®"
That afternoon you wake up and remember that you promised to meet The Guys for some basketball over at that elementary school with the outdoor hoops. You fumble around your closet looking for your court shoes for a half hour, remember that you still need to do laundry, then remember that your hoop shoes are on the porch/patio/workbench where you left them last week when you previously noticed that shoe smell (musk ox, cigar bar, corn chips, etc.), so you retrieve the shoes, find a pair of acceptably clean socks, and sit to put them on when you notice an itchy burning redness between your toes. You realize that this is what comes from living like a caveman, and again you start to promise that you are going to Change. Things must Improve. You cannot continue to live This Way. But Change is something one does in The Future, and here in The Now you have some Way Nasty Funk going on between your toes, and you don't feel entirely comfortable putting shoes and socks on those toes... UNLESS you have a super-jumbo aerosol can of store-brand underarm deodorant. Simply grab your handy-dandy Fung-O-Way spray, hit the affected areas with a light almost-surely medicinal fog, immediately grab that pair of Chinese take-out chopsticks left on the counter and bite down upon them as if they are the rawhide strip in an Apache childbirth scene as rolling waves of silver-hot searing pain course up your leg and into the deepest crevices of your tiny wimpering mind, then slip on the socks and shoes and hobble off for a few hours of huffing and puffing around a dilapidated schoolyard.
"Thief-Stoppr®"
That evening, after going out for pizza and beer with the rest of your no-game bad-hooping buddies, you all pile back to your place to watch TV since "Fistful Of Dollars" is on AMC in widescreen. You stop by the 7-Eleven for beer and CornNuts, and as you unlock your front door you look up and see your neighbor wandering over to know if he can bum an extra six-pack off you since you did the same to him the weekend before when you were too drunk to buy more beer. "Uh, no," you explain with annoyance, entering your home and quickly locking the door behind you as your neighbor starts screaming at you, explaining how he'll get that beer, you just watch. Later, as you are grabbing a bag of Funyons from the kitchen during the opening credits, you hear the soft metallic scrape of a window sliding open and you look up to see your neighbor trying to crawl through the small window over the sink in the kitchen, reaching towards the six-pack on the counter and mumbling all the while how you owe him those beers dammit, and you realize that he quite likely will GET those beers dammit... UNLESS you have a super-jumbo aerosol can of store-brand underarm deodorant. Simply grab your handy-dandy Thief Stoppr from the kitchen table where you left it before basketball, aim suarely between the intruder's beady hate-filled eyes and let fly with a refreshing blast of Mountain Freshness, then rap his windowsill-gripping knuckles firmly yet gently before closing and locking that kitchen window, then grab the Funyons and beer and scurry back to the Media Room so as not to miss any of The Man With No Name.
The next morning, when you waken on the sofa to the sound of the still-playing television, you tear yourself away from The Three Stooges on "N.Y.U.K." on AMC and decide that today finally in that Dawn Of A New Day when you will finally get your act together and start living life like a productive adult human. You pick up all the clothes and pizza boxes and empty plastic six-pack ringy thingies, you change sheets on the bed, toss the old sheets into the dumpster, you load the dishwasher, and then you shower, shave, comb your hair in preparation for going to the store for a full battery of real cleaning supplies. You grab your handy-dandy super-jumbo aerosol can of store-brand underarm deodorant, take aim on the left armpit, and hear a brief quiet hiss which quickly fades to silence just as the sad reality of your situation starts to sink in.
Out of deodorant.
Note to self-- next time buy two super-jumbo aerosol cans of store-brand underarm deodorant.
= END =
Subject: Groceries
Pros: Many groceries are very good.
Cons: Some groceries are not very good.
Summary: I have long been a user of groceries, and I recommend them highly.
Modern grocery stores are absolute marvels-- palaces of wonderfully wretched excess where you can find dozens of products for use in any specific situation. Need orange juice? Great-- they have "from concentrate," "not-from concentrate," with calcium, without, with extra A & C, with pulp, no-pulp, some pulp, all-pulp, different pulp.... Need bleach? They've got large, jumbo, mega, regular, lemon, rainfresh, concentrated, super-concentrated, absurdly concentrated.... You say you need apples? Well, there's Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Jonagold, Fuji, Granny Smith, McInstosh, Rome, Gala, Washington State apples, New Zealand Apples, home-schooled California free-range apples, all available in various size categories.
Being confronted with so many choices can lead to what author Douglas Coupland labeled "option paralysis"-- the tendency, when confronted by a near unlimited number of opportunities or possibilities, to choose nothing. Instead of getting just the right product for the need at hand, you wind up buying nothing, leaving all sorts of problems and needs unaddressed.
Which is why I am so excited to turn your valuable and harried attention to one of THE true marvels of this modern age, one product that will fill the bill for a dizzying variety of chores, a product whose many uses address so many different needs and situations that no trip to the store is complete until you've replenished your supply.
I am talking, of course, about the super-jumbo aerosol can of store-brand underarm deodorant.
What you say? "Are you high? It's just deodorant!"
Right, and beer is JUST a sports drink.
Of course, it's important that you buy the right brand of no-name deodorant spray. If you buy a name you trust and recognize, chances are you will talk yourself out of using the product in some of the scenarios I will describe. Your best bet is to buy the supremo-monstro canister of the most generic house brand offered-- sheer mass of product is the key. You want a can that looks roughly the size of a 40-millimeter shell casing. Remember-- "quantity has a quality all its own." Plus, a ten pound canister of the no-name stuff will be about 30% cheaper than any recognizable brand name. As for scent, if you buy the real deal-- the no name black can that has "suitable for use on humans" somewhere on the label in tiny type-- your pickings are likely slim when it comes to fragrance, and I'm pretty sure that "regular scented" is what you will wind up with, but fret not, gentle shopper: close enough is good enough in this game. In fact, it's probably best to AVOID any particular pleasing scent, since there's no telling where you'll end up where or how you'll end up using this miracle product. Why, consider just these few actual uses from my own past:
"Shower In A Can®"
While in college I and my roommates discovered that a jumbo canister of underarm deodorant can be an absolute life-saver when you happen to hit that snooze button 16 or 17 too many times in the morning. Picture this scenario: you oversleep, get up and realize that you have only 4 minutes to dress and get to class before the finals start. You understand all too well that you smell like a wet musk ox after a night in a cigar bar but you also know that sometimes there's just no time for hygiene... UNLESS you have the super-jumbo aerosol can of store-brand underarm deodorant. Simply grab your handy-dandy Shower In A Can, mist yourself from topnotch to toenail while grabbing a Pop-Tart from the cupboard, then sprint to class to ace that Biochem final and be one step closer to a fulfilling career in brain surgery.
"Room So Fresh®"
You come home after a hard day of Biochem Finals/sales presentations/margaritas by the pool and find a phone message from your parents alerting you that they're in town and stopping by to take you to dinner. You step into your dorm room/apartment/four-bedroom ranch style, realize that the place smells like a wet musk ox after a night in a cigar bar, and then notice the fact that your parents are due to arrive sometime in the next 90 seconds. You know that Dear Old Mom will come in sniffing and wincing, starting her standard finger-wagging lecture... UNLESS you have a super-jumbo aerosol can of store-brand underarm deodorant. Simply grab your handy-dandy Room So Fresh spray, sprint through the room while spraying the can overhead, kicking all the dirty clothes and empty beer cans into the bedroom, then answer the doorbell with a big warm smile.
"Insta-Laundry®"
You get back from dinner with the parents at Red Lobster and find another message saying that "everybody" will be meeting and such and such bar that evening and that you really ought to tag along since SHE'S going to be there and this is finally maybe your Big Chance. You bound into the closet and painfully remember that you meant to do laundry that afternoon (you were distracted by cleaning the apartment for the parents, remember?), meaning your cleanest shirt is whichever one that doesn't have palm-sized chili stains, the one that still hints slightly of a wet musk ox after a night in a cigar bar, meaning you're doomed to another night of "Hitler's Secret Arsenal" on The History Channel... UNLESS you have a super-jumbo aerosol can of store-brand underarm deodorant. Simply grab your handy-dandy Insta-Laundry spray, shake the Pringles from the pockets of the shirt and give it a quick spritz of manly scent, then head off to be completely ignored by the One True Woman Of Your Recent Dreams.
"Shoe-Nice®"
You stumble back home, broke and alone, heartbroken that SHE three times forgot your name, and you fall into bed, thinking for a moment that the place smells kinda fresh and sporty. You kick off your shoes, stumble to the bathroom for the nightly ablutions, then wander back to bed and suddenly realize that that earlier kinda fresh and sporty odor has been replaced with something that smells none too vaguely of a wet musk ox after a night in a cigar bar with a bag of corn ships served on the side. You realize that those two orders of Buffalo Wings in your tummy are not enjoying this odor, and both you and the wings will be bothered by the foul stench all night... UNLESS you have a super-jumbo aerosol can of store-brand underarm deodorant. Simply grab your handy-dandy Shoe-Nice spray, hold your breath as you roll over to snatch the sweaty Nike's, dash to the back porch/patio/garage, fumigate those bad boys but good, then wander back to bed to have strange garlic-fueled dreams.
"Bug-B-Gone®"
The next morning you roll out of bed at the crack of 9:30 AM and pad quietly into the kitchen for a healthy breakfast featuring a trough full of Wheaties and a half can of Mountain Dew you forget to put back in the fridge, but when you open your pantry door, you are confronted by a half dozen little brown intruders milling about on the floor of your pantry. You realize that you really ought to start living a little better, possibly picking up after yourself and exhibiting maybe the tiniest twinge of pride in your wardrobe, hygiene, and housing, but you also know that those are really big projects and the project at hand is more immediate and pressing and will quite likely scurry away to the back reaches of the pantry where they will again be ignored and forgotten... UNLESS you have a super-jumbo aerosol can of store-brand underarm deodorant. Simply grab your handy-dandy "Bug-B-Gone" off the corner of the counter (where you left it the night before while dealing with the corn chippy smell), let loose a fresh scented cloud of Insectoidal Death From On High with one hand while you reach in to retrieve the Wheaties box with the other, then wander off to consume a healthy sensible Breakfast of Champions while watching those BodyShaping chicks on ESPN2.
"Fung-O-Way®"
That afternoon you wake up and remember that you promised to meet The Guys for some basketball over at that elementary school with the outdoor hoops. You fumble around your closet looking for your court shoes for a half hour, remember that you still need to do laundry, then remember that your hoop shoes are on the porch/patio/workbench where you left them last week when you previously noticed that shoe smell (musk ox, cigar bar, corn chips, etc.), so you retrieve the shoes, find a pair of acceptably clean socks, and sit to put them on when you notice an itchy burning redness between your toes. You realize that this is what comes from living like a caveman, and again you start to promise that you are going to Change. Things must Improve. You cannot continue to live This Way. But Change is something one does in The Future, and here in The Now you have some Way Nasty Funk going on between your toes, and you don't feel entirely comfortable putting shoes and socks on those toes... UNLESS you have a super-jumbo aerosol can of store-brand underarm deodorant. Simply grab your handy-dandy Fung-O-Way spray, hit the affected areas with a light almost-surely medicinal fog, immediately grab that pair of Chinese take-out chopsticks left on the counter and bite down upon them as if they are the rawhide strip in an Apache childbirth scene as rolling waves of silver-hot searing pain course up your leg and into the deepest crevices of your tiny wimpering mind, then slip on the socks and shoes and hobble off for a few hours of huffing and puffing around a dilapidated schoolyard.
"Thief-Stoppr®"
That evening, after going out for pizza and beer with the rest of your no-game bad-hooping buddies, you all pile back to your place to watch TV since "Fistful Of Dollars" is on AMC in widescreen. You stop by the 7-Eleven for beer and CornNuts, and as you unlock your front door you look up and see your neighbor wandering over to know if he can bum an extra six-pack off you since you did the same to him the weekend before when you were too drunk to buy more beer. "Uh, no," you explain with annoyance, entering your home and quickly locking the door behind you as your neighbor starts screaming at you, explaining how he'll get that beer, you just watch. Later, as you are grabbing a bag of Funyons from the kitchen during the opening credits, you hear the soft metallic scrape of a window sliding open and you look up to see your neighbor trying to crawl through the small window over the sink in the kitchen, reaching towards the six-pack on the counter and mumbling all the while how you owe him those beers dammit, and you realize that he quite likely will GET those beers dammit... UNLESS you have a super-jumbo aerosol can of store-brand underarm deodorant. Simply grab your handy-dandy Thief Stoppr from the kitchen table where you left it before basketball, aim suarely between the intruder's beady hate-filled eyes and let fly with a refreshing blast of Mountain Freshness, then rap his windowsill-gripping knuckles firmly yet gently before closing and locking that kitchen window, then grab the Funyons and beer and scurry back to the Media Room so as not to miss any of The Man With No Name.
The next morning, when you waken on the sofa to the sound of the still-playing television, you tear yourself away from The Three Stooges on "N.Y.U.K." on AMC and decide that today finally in that Dawn Of A New Day when you will finally get your act together and start living life like a productive adult human. You pick up all the clothes and pizza boxes and empty plastic six-pack ringy thingies, you change sheets on the bed, toss the old sheets into the dumpster, you load the dishwasher, and then you shower, shave, comb your hair in preparation for going to the store for a full battery of real cleaning supplies. You grab your handy-dandy super-jumbo aerosol can of store-brand underarm deodorant, take aim on the left armpit, and hear a brief quiet hiss which quickly fades to silence just as the sad reality of your situation starts to sink in.
Out of deodorant.
Note to self-- next time buy two super-jumbo aerosol cans of store-brand underarm deodorant.
= END =
16 June 2018
That time I almost killed myself.
[NOTE: this post first appeared as a Twitter thread originally posted on the morning of June 8, 2018, spurred by news of the suicide of Anthony Bourdain. A great many people seemed totally surprised by the Bourdain suicide, as they all thought he seemed like he had so much *good* in his life that there was no way the darkness of suicide might ever darken his story. These people were, of course, tragically mistaken, and there was a great deal of discussion onoine by a great many folks, all reflecting on their own personal tales about suicidal depression and episodes. I decided it was finally time to come totally clean on my own long-refrigerated such tale of a close call with suicide.
It refers back to the Spring of 1982, my senior year in high school, and well... "things were not a good as they could have been." The specific detailss are not as important as the events and thoughts in response to those details, so that's what the tweetstorm dealt with: the way suicidal depression can come out of "nowhere" to threaten those whom many would never believe might be at risk.
In a surprise to me, that tweetstorm sorta exploded, with hundreds of thousands of impressions and hundreds of "likes" and several dozen comments and responses (public and private) -- via Twitter but also via email, and phone, and text, and at least one or two real-life convos with friends and family who'd never previously heard a whisper of this tale. Apparently, a great many people were interested (or perhaps just morbidly fascinated-- I do not claim to understand).
At any rate, I had a few people NOT on Twitter ask if I might repost the entire thread in a form/location where it could be seen and read in its entirety.
And so here it is, reposted in one document, with each tweet in that thread now living as a paragraph in the large combined essay.
I don't post this (again) because I want or need attention for any of this, but rather because it feels important to get these kinds of stories out so that others might better understand just how common and easily camoflaged these typs of experiences are. As with Bourdain's suicide, people seemed surprised by my tale. Unlike Bourdain, I survived to share the tale (albeit many decades later). I was stupidly lucky that I pulled off at the last moment and didn't end my life. Others are too often denied that same stupid good luck.
I guess what I am saying -- what I was hoping to convey -- is simply "this shit is real. It is common. It happens to people all around you all the time. Be aware, and stand ready to be the kind of friend who might literally save a friend's life just by being there, by listening, by reminding someone that it's never as totally black as it might seem in any lonely moment."
I hope that makes sense. If not, as always, your full purchase price will be refunded.
"11:52 AM - 8 Jun 2018
Apologies in advance for a long humor-free thread:
When I was 17, I came within a devil’s breath of taking the final leap (literally) in a suicide attempt. I was in a dark lonely moment, and I just wanted that pain and terror to end— more than anything I could think or describe.
I’d not planned it or plotted it nor can I recall ever even contemplating such a thing before. But there came a night when everything swirled into a perfect storm of self-destructive terror, and some still-rational part of my brain plotted a possible exit strategy:
“We’ll dive headfirst from the huge stadium onto the pavement below. We’ll need to make sure to hit headfirst, of course.”
So I climbed the local HS stadium, clambered over the safety fence on the top back wall, leaned out and was holding on by one hand, staring at the pavement below, trying to gauge how much to lean to assure headfirst impact 75 feet below.
And that’s when a breeze of clarity drifted thru my head, and a small voice somewhere inside quietly screamed out “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?” And then there was utter silence, and then horrible realization of my predicament.
I probably came closer to falling at that precise moment than at any other, as I almost slipped in my mad scramble to regain tight grip and get back over into the right side of the fence. Which I managed.
And then I slumped down and vomited all over my feet. And I cried for more than a little bit. And then I wandered home, and managed to wash my clothes without being noticed, and never mentioned this episode to anyone for very many years.
I NEVER TOLD ANYONE. Nobody who knew me then ever had any clue about any of this.
I never again had any similar episode, but neither have I ever forgotten how that moment felt: a total loss of rational perspective, replaced by an almost drunken logic where the clearly worst idea seems the clearly best idea. I just wanted the fear to be gone.
I’ve gone thru counseling at least twice in the 35 years since— talked about this in one series of sessions, didn’t in another series. I don’t live in constant terror of a relapse— that was a lifetime ago. A totally different person. A different movie.
But neither do I totally turn my back on the inescapable fact that that... thing— that beast— lurks somewhere deep in my brain, ready to whisper the worst advice at the worst time if I ever allow myself to tune out all other voices. Which is not exactly comforting.
The point to this overlong tale is simply this: you never really know what pain someone else was fighting against for their very lives. IS fighting against. What rationally bizarre and extreme action that struggle might drive them to. Drive YOU to.
These tornados of the soul can swirl up with little or no warning, and leave you with little safe shelter, and lay utter waste to every aspect of your existence. Or they can (as in my case) vanish just as quickly as they appeared, leaving you a shuddering sobbing wreck.
So be careful before you make very many grand pronouncements about suicide and depression. Unless you’ve actually been there and lived through it, you don’t know. You just don’t.
And If you’re very very lucky, you never will. Trust me."
[end]
It refers back to the Spring of 1982, my senior year in high school, and well... "things were not a good as they could have been." The specific detailss are not as important as the events and thoughts in response to those details, so that's what the tweetstorm dealt with: the way suicidal depression can come out of "nowhere" to threaten those whom many would never believe might be at risk.
In a surprise to me, that tweetstorm sorta exploded, with hundreds of thousands of impressions and hundreds of "likes" and several dozen comments and responses (public and private) -- via Twitter but also via email, and phone, and text, and at least one or two real-life convos with friends and family who'd never previously heard a whisper of this tale. Apparently, a great many people were interested (or perhaps just morbidly fascinated-- I do not claim to understand).
At any rate, I had a few people NOT on Twitter ask if I might repost the entire thread in a form/location where it could be seen and read in its entirety.
And so here it is, reposted in one document, with each tweet in that thread now living as a paragraph in the large combined essay.
I don't post this (again) because I want or need attention for any of this, but rather because it feels important to get these kinds of stories out so that others might better understand just how common and easily camoflaged these typs of experiences are. As with Bourdain's suicide, people seemed surprised by my tale. Unlike Bourdain, I survived to share the tale (albeit many decades later). I was stupidly lucky that I pulled off at the last moment and didn't end my life. Others are too often denied that same stupid good luck.
I guess what I am saying -- what I was hoping to convey -- is simply "this shit is real. It is common. It happens to people all around you all the time. Be aware, and stand ready to be the kind of friend who might literally save a friend's life just by being there, by listening, by reminding someone that it's never as totally black as it might seem in any lonely moment."
I hope that makes sense. If not, as always, your full purchase price will be refunded.
"11:52 AM - 8 Jun 2018
Apologies in advance for a long humor-free thread:
When I was 17, I came within a devil’s breath of taking the final leap (literally) in a suicide attempt. I was in a dark lonely moment, and I just wanted that pain and terror to end— more than anything I could think or describe.
I’d not planned it or plotted it nor can I recall ever even contemplating such a thing before. But there came a night when everything swirled into a perfect storm of self-destructive terror, and some still-rational part of my brain plotted a possible exit strategy:
“We’ll dive headfirst from the huge stadium onto the pavement below. We’ll need to make sure to hit headfirst, of course.”
So I climbed the local HS stadium, clambered over the safety fence on the top back wall, leaned out and was holding on by one hand, staring at the pavement below, trying to gauge how much to lean to assure headfirst impact 75 feet below.
And that’s when a breeze of clarity drifted thru my head, and a small voice somewhere inside quietly screamed out “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?” And then there was utter silence, and then horrible realization of my predicament.
I probably came closer to falling at that precise moment than at any other, as I almost slipped in my mad scramble to regain tight grip and get back over into the right side of the fence. Which I managed.
And then I slumped down and vomited all over my feet. And I cried for more than a little bit. And then I wandered home, and managed to wash my clothes without being noticed, and never mentioned this episode to anyone for very many years.
I NEVER TOLD ANYONE. Nobody who knew me then ever had any clue about any of this.
I never again had any similar episode, but neither have I ever forgotten how that moment felt: a total loss of rational perspective, replaced by an almost drunken logic where the clearly worst idea seems the clearly best idea. I just wanted the fear to be gone.
I’ve gone thru counseling at least twice in the 35 years since— talked about this in one series of sessions, didn’t in another series. I don’t live in constant terror of a relapse— that was a lifetime ago. A totally different person. A different movie.
But neither do I totally turn my back on the inescapable fact that that... thing— that beast— lurks somewhere deep in my brain, ready to whisper the worst advice at the worst time if I ever allow myself to tune out all other voices. Which is not exactly comforting.
The point to this overlong tale is simply this: you never really know what pain someone else was fighting against for their very lives. IS fighting against. What rationally bizarre and extreme action that struggle might drive them to. Drive YOU to.
These tornados of the soul can swirl up with little or no warning, and leave you with little safe shelter, and lay utter waste to every aspect of your existence. Or they can (as in my case) vanish just as quickly as they appeared, leaving you a shuddering sobbing wreck.
So be careful before you make very many grand pronouncements about suicide and depression. Unless you’ve actually been there and lived through it, you don’t know. You just don’t.
And If you’re very very lucky, you never will. Trust me."
[end]
04 February 2017
a bag of crap, a jug of coffee, and thou
It’s Super Bowl weekend, which means it’s also time for the Cub Scouts and their “Super Bowl of Giving,” an annual food collection program benefitting local food banks and charities. To participate, you simply leave some canned goods or non-perishables in a bag hanging from your front doorknob (or on your porch) and Cub Scouts in your neighborhood walk thru to collect the bags and deliver to the aforementioned charities.
Great program: simple, easy to understand, easy for the young Scouts to handle. All good.
I am well past the point where any of my sons are Cub Scout aged, so I no longer have occasion to be reminded of it until I see the uniformed little collectors scurrying around, thrilled at each new donation they pick up.
So I am awake this Saturday, doing my usual “curse the gods for my existence as I wait for the coffeemaker to hurry up dammit” routine, and our dogs go nuts: barking, leaping against front door, howling. I glance around corner to see if perhaps someone is there, or if there was a delivery, or if maybe the neighbors are out with their Shih-tzu which to my dogs looks like a walking McNugget.
Nothing. “Stupid dumb dogs,” think, and return to the aforementioned cursing and waiting.
A few seconds later, the dogs AGAIN go nuts, this time even louder. Again I glance, and this time I see a tiny little Cub Scout — Cindy Lou Who Scout — leave something on my porch and then scuttle away quickly. Again I yell at dogs to shut up, I pour my coffee, and I step out to see what is going on. I see the Scout — along with his mom and two other Cubs and a wagon loaded with bags of donations — rounding the corner to leave our cul-de-sac.
“Oh yeah…” I mumble. “Super Bowl of Giving. Cool.”
I glance down and there’s a small white Target bag tied closed, with what looks like a large handful of gravel inside.
“Wow— good thinking!” I think. “They provide donation bags, and weigh them down so they don’t just blow around and create an ugly litter situation!” So I pick up my “donation bag” and come inside to see what canned goods I can part with. I open the bag to dump out the gravel, and that’s when I suddenly reassemble these details into a whole different mental LEGO construction.
This is not a donation bag.
This is a bag of cat shit.
Which The Wife collected from our two litter boxes. And tied closed. And dropped outside on our front porch for me to put into the trash whenever I first went outside.
Which was sitting there on the my front porch. On the Super Bowl of Giving.
When a happy little Scout saw “another donation.”
“OH MY GOD…” I shout and sprint back to my door. I bolt outside, scream ‘WAIT! NO! IT WAS A MISTAKE!”
But I see no Cubs. I rush back and grab my keys and hop into the van: I HAVE to find that Cub Scout and explain. And apologize. Beg forgiveness. “IT’S ALL A HUGE FUNNY MISUNDERSTANDING!” I am pre-explaining to myself aloud in the car. ‘WE’RE NOT THAT KIND OF SICK TWISTED SICKO! REALLY!”
(Well, we might be, but the fact remains that we did NOT intentionally leave a bag of cat crap for a Cub Scout donation. That’s beyond even my childish evility, at least on the Super Bowl fo Giving. This early. Without my coffee yet, which is still back in my kitchen next to an open bag of cat droppings in my kitchen.)
I circle thru our neighborhood twice, but I never see those Scouts. Chances are, I’ll never see them again. In my mind, I can hear that poor Cub Scout’s Mom: “Jimmy— don’t you ever EVER go back to that AWFUL neighborhood ever again! DO YOU HEAR ME!?! SWEAR IT, JIMMY! SWEAR IT NOOOWWW!!!!”
I can hear her reporting this obscene sick demented behavior at the next Pack Meeting: “Sweet mother of god! WHAT KIND OF BASTARD DOES THAT?”
I can see the Dad consoling his son: “Jimmy, there are some bad people in the world. And one fine day we shall hunt them down and use them for dingo fodder.”
(In my mind, imagined conversations are always excellent.)
I pull back into my driveway, literally on the verge of tears. Tears of shame, embarrassment, and pity. And as I am sitting there, my phone pings: new text message from The Wife:
And so it goes.
Great program: simple, easy to understand, easy for the young Scouts to handle. All good.
I am well past the point where any of my sons are Cub Scout aged, so I no longer have occasion to be reminded of it until I see the uniformed little collectors scurrying around, thrilled at each new donation they pick up.
So I am awake this Saturday, doing my usual “curse the gods for my existence as I wait for the coffeemaker to hurry up dammit” routine, and our dogs go nuts: barking, leaping against front door, howling. I glance around corner to see if perhaps someone is there, or if there was a delivery, or if maybe the neighbors are out with their Shih-tzu which to my dogs looks like a walking McNugget.
Nothing. “Stupid dumb dogs,” think, and return to the aforementioned cursing and waiting.
A few seconds later, the dogs AGAIN go nuts, this time even louder. Again I glance, and this time I see a tiny little Cub Scout — Cindy Lou Who Scout — leave something on my porch and then scuttle away quickly. Again I yell at dogs to shut up, I pour my coffee, and I step out to see what is going on. I see the Scout — along with his mom and two other Cubs and a wagon loaded with bags of donations — rounding the corner to leave our cul-de-sac.
“Oh yeah…” I mumble. “Super Bowl of Giving. Cool.”
I glance down and there’s a small white Target bag tied closed, with what looks like a large handful of gravel inside.
“Wow— good thinking!” I think. “They provide donation bags, and weigh them down so they don’t just blow around and create an ugly litter situation!” So I pick up my “donation bag” and come inside to see what canned goods I can part with. I open the bag to dump out the gravel, and that’s when I suddenly reassemble these details into a whole different mental LEGO construction.
This is not a donation bag.
This is a bag of cat shit.
Which The Wife collected from our two litter boxes. And tied closed. And dropped outside on our front porch for me to put into the trash whenever I first went outside.
Which was sitting there on the my front porch. On the Super Bowl of Giving.
When a happy little Scout saw “another donation.”
“OH MY GOD…” I shout and sprint back to my door. I bolt outside, scream ‘WAIT! NO! IT WAS A MISTAKE!”
But I see no Cubs. I rush back and grab my keys and hop into the van: I HAVE to find that Cub Scout and explain. And apologize. Beg forgiveness. “IT’S ALL A HUGE FUNNY MISUNDERSTANDING!” I am pre-explaining to myself aloud in the car. ‘WE’RE NOT THAT KIND OF SICK TWISTED SICKO! REALLY!”
(Well, we might be, but the fact remains that we did NOT intentionally leave a bag of cat crap for a Cub Scout donation. That’s beyond even my childish evility, at least on the Super Bowl fo Giving. This early. Without my coffee yet, which is still back in my kitchen next to an open bag of cat droppings in my kitchen.)
I circle thru our neighborhood twice, but I never see those Scouts. Chances are, I’ll never see them again. In my mind, I can hear that poor Cub Scout’s Mom: “Jimmy— don’t you ever EVER go back to that AWFUL neighborhood ever again! DO YOU HEAR ME!?! SWEAR IT, JIMMY! SWEAR IT NOOOWWW!!!!”
I can hear her reporting this obscene sick demented behavior at the next Pack Meeting: “Sweet mother of god! WHAT KIND OF BASTARD DOES THAT?”
I can see the Dad consoling his son: “Jimmy, there are some bad people in the world. And one fine day we shall hunt them down and use them for dingo fodder.”
(In my mind, imagined conversations are always excellent.)
I pull back into my driveway, literally on the verge of tears. Tears of shame, embarrassment, and pity. And as I am sitting there, my phone pings: new text message from The Wife:
left bag of litter on the porch. remember to put in trash. thx
And so it goes.
28 June 2016
A Cunning Plan
"stupid problems require stupid solutions"
[Note: this essay was originally posted to the now/rightly-defunct Epinions.com site as "satire," but in the aftermath of the recent #Brexit vote by the UK to leave the EU... perhaps it's an idea whose time has now come. Perhaps England itself might suffice for some part of this plan. Ahem. --BN]
A Cunning Plan
The problem is obvious: there are too many stupid damned idjuts running loose, stirring up trouble for the smart people like me (and, to a lesser extent, like you). Now, it's easy enough for me to ignore occasional encounters with rampant moronity, but in these dark and troubled times it seems as though a smart man such as myself can hardly go ten or fifteen feet without having to pause to let some wingnut shuffle across my path.
The problem seems worse online. Here on Epinions, for example, one can hardly utter three words before some slobbering buffoon blunders up to start flapping their Cheeto-stained lips in your face, blathering on about what they think and what they like and what their opinion on such and such is and blah blah blah and I think we've all seen and heard just about enough of this, right?
So I have a plan.
Once upon a year gone by George Carlin took time away from his cocaine dependency to suggest that maybe it might be a good idea to round up all the stupid people and dump them into one of the western states in the US-- one of the big boxy-shaped ones, like Utah or Wyoming or New Mexico-- so that the rest of us might live in peace and tranquility. Many people laughed at this suggestion from Carlin, due in no small part to the fact that he offered this suggestion as part of a comedy routine, plus I'm pretty sure that the aforementioned cocaine dependency did little to build a reputation as a man recognized for cogent thinking.
But just as Da Vinci envisioned the helicopter long before anyone really understand how to make one, Carlin's coke-fueled fantastic dream well have been simply a glimpse into the future, for today I am here to tell you that I know how to make that dream real.
Carlin's plan would never have worked if put into actual use, since there's simply no way that any state's population (or its congressional representatives) would have allowed their state to be used as a National Dillhole Dumping Ground. At this stage of the planning, Carlin likely threw up his hands in frustration and decided to have a few more lines of blow, but as I am not burdened with such chemical distractions, I have had time to work through the problems, and I'm here to tell you that there is a place in the far West where such a plan could work without significant popular or political opposition.
Guam.
Guam is perfect for my plan. Just consider the many advantages of Guam for such a plan:
• Guam is U.S.-controlled territory, meaning we won't have to deal with any tiresome immigration issues when we start shipping off the morons, but as a mere protectorate (or territory, or whatever it is... we can look that up later) Guam cannot claim the same rights as might a full-blown state. If we buried Oregon under four feet of mewling dipshit, there would be legal challenges and all sorts of problems, but with Guam... I mean, come on: it's GUAM.
• Guam has no significant military might of its own. If we try shoving our morons down the throats of any other country, no matter how normally pacifist and peaceful they might seem right now, once we start pumping our genetic sewage their way, I think we could expect see serious trouble. I suspect that even Switzerland or, hell, CANADA even would nuke up and go postal if they saw a long bus convoy of American morons coming over the hill, suitcases and change of address cards in hand.
• Guam is a long way away, separated from us back here in the U.S. by a few thousand miles of shark-infested ocean just perfect to alleviate any safety or security concerns of lily-livered folks back here who might otherwise worry about some sort of ugly resentful backlash if the (ahem) "parties to be relocated" were ever to find their way back to the mainland again.
• Guam is a fairly large island, allowing for large numbers of morons to be moved there, BUT-- and this is a strong selling point-- Guam is NOT so large that it might offer sufficient agricultural resources to allow the new moron population to expand even more. We neither want nor need a repeat of that unfortunate bunnyrabbits-into-Australia fiasco, so the limited acreage and rocky terrain of Guam will serve as useful "limiting reagents" to the growth of the moron population.
Now obviously there are some difficulties to overcome, but that is to be expected with any grand visionary plan such as this. For example, some of the native Guamanians (Guamites? Guamagranates? Someone Google this up for me, please...) will likely grouse and complain about this plan, unhappy that "their" island was chosen to become "Idjut Country" and possibly even reluctant to vacate the premises, but I expect that we can win them over through a combination of slick advertising and thuggish intimidation. Also, let's not lose sight of the fact that "we" (well, "I") back here on the mainland have done the bulk of the planning and organizing, while THEY on their happy little island have done very little to help, so perhaps we could simply play upon their feelings of guilt and tell them it's their turn to kick in.
Also, we need to help the native Guamanders (Guamicans? Guamese? We really need to get this nailed down before we roll out the hard-sell ad campaign...) get past the initial shock and realize that the wheels of progress can't be slowed just for their own petty selfish concerns. We're up to our eyeballs in morons here in the U.S., while there in the middle of nowhere sits a perfectly useful island that could house millions of morons, and it's time to get everyone on board. We need the space, dammit, so sacrifices have to be made, and I think we all agree that it's a far better thing that these sacrifices be made by folks other than us.
Any lingering reluctance from the natives (I really could use that name, people...) could be washed away just by running a nature documentary about Christmas Island. Twice a year that tiny South Pacific island is literally overrun by tens of millions of ant-sized red crabs as they migrate across the island for their mating and spawning. If you've ever seen it, you'll never forget it-- a seething crawling red carpet of walking micro-seafood. We'll show that to the Guamish (Guamolians? Guamozzles? This is starting to become embarrassing, folks...) and then tell them "now just imagine this same situation on YOUR island, except replace those teeny little crabs with Chuck Norris fans, K-car purchasers, and Ross Perot supporters. Are you SURE you wanna hang around?"
Guam would be vacant by lunchtime.
Remember-- future generations will judge us by what we do today. If we leave our children and our children's children to inherit an America littered with great blundering herds of slobbering doddering morons, what kind of parents are we? What kind of people are we? We need to make the tough decision today to ensure that the future is a little less dim for everyone.
Except those poor Guamicaneans. Er, Guamalusions. Guami... (sigh)
Dammit.
[Note: this essay was originally posted to the now/rightly-defunct Epinions.com site as "satire," but in the aftermath of the recent #Brexit vote by the UK to leave the EU... perhaps it's an idea whose time has now come. Perhaps England itself might suffice for some part of this plan. Ahem. --BN]
A Cunning Plan
The problem is obvious: there are too many stupid damned idjuts running loose, stirring up trouble for the smart people like me (and, to a lesser extent, like you). Now, it's easy enough for me to ignore occasional encounters with rampant moronity, but in these dark and troubled times it seems as though a smart man such as myself can hardly go ten or fifteen feet without having to pause to let some wingnut shuffle across my path.
The problem seems worse online. Here on Epinions, for example, one can hardly utter three words before some slobbering buffoon blunders up to start flapping their Cheeto-stained lips in your face, blathering on about what they think and what they like and what their opinion on such and such is and blah blah blah and I think we've all seen and heard just about enough of this, right?
So I have a plan.
Once upon a year gone by George Carlin took time away from his cocaine dependency to suggest that maybe it might be a good idea to round up all the stupid people and dump them into one of the western states in the US-- one of the big boxy-shaped ones, like Utah or Wyoming or New Mexico-- so that the rest of us might live in peace and tranquility. Many people laughed at this suggestion from Carlin, due in no small part to the fact that he offered this suggestion as part of a comedy routine, plus I'm pretty sure that the aforementioned cocaine dependency did little to build a reputation as a man recognized for cogent thinking.
But just as Da Vinci envisioned the helicopter long before anyone really understand how to make one, Carlin's coke-fueled fantastic dream well have been simply a glimpse into the future, for today I am here to tell you that I know how to make that dream real.
Carlin's plan would never have worked if put into actual use, since there's simply no way that any state's population (or its congressional representatives) would have allowed their state to be used as a National Dillhole Dumping Ground. At this stage of the planning, Carlin likely threw up his hands in frustration and decided to have a few more lines of blow, but as I am not burdened with such chemical distractions, I have had time to work through the problems, and I'm here to tell you that there is a place in the far West where such a plan could work without significant popular or political opposition.
Guam.
Guam is perfect for my plan. Just consider the many advantages of Guam for such a plan:
• Guam is U.S.-controlled territory, meaning we won't have to deal with any tiresome immigration issues when we start shipping off the morons, but as a mere protectorate (or territory, or whatever it is... we can look that up later) Guam cannot claim the same rights as might a full-blown state. If we buried Oregon under four feet of mewling dipshit, there would be legal challenges and all sorts of problems, but with Guam... I mean, come on: it's GUAM.
• Guam has no significant military might of its own. If we try shoving our morons down the throats of any other country, no matter how normally pacifist and peaceful they might seem right now, once we start pumping our genetic sewage their way, I think we could expect see serious trouble. I suspect that even Switzerland or, hell, CANADA even would nuke up and go postal if they saw a long bus convoy of American morons coming over the hill, suitcases and change of address cards in hand.
• Guam is a long way away, separated from us back here in the U.S. by a few thousand miles of shark-infested ocean just perfect to alleviate any safety or security concerns of lily-livered folks back here who might otherwise worry about some sort of ugly resentful backlash if the (ahem) "parties to be relocated" were ever to find their way back to the mainland again.
• Guam is a fairly large island, allowing for large numbers of morons to be moved there, BUT-- and this is a strong selling point-- Guam is NOT so large that it might offer sufficient agricultural resources to allow the new moron population to expand even more. We neither want nor need a repeat of that unfortunate bunnyrabbits-into-Australia fiasco, so the limited acreage and rocky terrain of Guam will serve as useful "limiting reagents" to the growth of the moron population.
Now obviously there are some difficulties to overcome, but that is to be expected with any grand visionary plan such as this. For example, some of the native Guamanians (Guamites? Guamagranates? Someone Google this up for me, please...) will likely grouse and complain about this plan, unhappy that "their" island was chosen to become "Idjut Country" and possibly even reluctant to vacate the premises, but I expect that we can win them over through a combination of slick advertising and thuggish intimidation. Also, let's not lose sight of the fact that "we" (well, "I") back here on the mainland have done the bulk of the planning and organizing, while THEY on their happy little island have done very little to help, so perhaps we could simply play upon their feelings of guilt and tell them it's their turn to kick in.
Also, we need to help the native Guamanders (Guamicans? Guamese? We really need to get this nailed down before we roll out the hard-sell ad campaign...) get past the initial shock and realize that the wheels of progress can't be slowed just for their own petty selfish concerns. We're up to our eyeballs in morons here in the U.S., while there in the middle of nowhere sits a perfectly useful island that could house millions of morons, and it's time to get everyone on board. We need the space, dammit, so sacrifices have to be made, and I think we all agree that it's a far better thing that these sacrifices be made by folks other than us.
Any lingering reluctance from the natives (I really could use that name, people...) could be washed away just by running a nature documentary about Christmas Island. Twice a year that tiny South Pacific island is literally overrun by tens of millions of ant-sized red crabs as they migrate across the island for their mating and spawning. If you've ever seen it, you'll never forget it-- a seething crawling red carpet of walking micro-seafood. We'll show that to the Guamish (Guamolians? Guamozzles? This is starting to become embarrassing, folks...) and then tell them "now just imagine this same situation on YOUR island, except replace those teeny little crabs with Chuck Norris fans, K-car purchasers, and Ross Perot supporters. Are you SURE you wanna hang around?"
Guam would be vacant by lunchtime.
Remember-- future generations will judge us by what we do today. If we leave our children and our children's children to inherit an America littered with great blundering herds of slobbering doddering morons, what kind of parents are we? What kind of people are we? We need to make the tough decision today to ensure that the future is a little less dim for everyone.
Except those poor Guamicaneans. Er, Guamalusions. Guami... (sigh)
Dammit.
14 December 2012
Now seems a good time to shut up
I sit here on a gray blustery Friday, trying to prepare for a Boy Scout camping trip this weekend, but my thoughts instead turn to Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut.
An armed man entered the school just an hour or so ago, and for no reason yet known, opened fire. On a school full of innocent kids and teachers.
Right now, reports indicate upwards of 30 people killed, including at least 18 children.
Twitter and Facebook of course are already seeing the usual major camps draw into familiar circles: the conservatives calling for prayers and bemoaning the sad state of our national character vs the liberals working up some outrage over the issue of gun control, and all I can think of is "SHUT UP -- ALL OF YOU!"
We have people down. Kids. Teachers. Parents. Bleeding and wounded and dying and dead. We have parents of 400 kids terrified beyond belief that their children were in this slice of Hell this morning, and then forced to pray the horrible yet understandable "please let the dead include someone else's family and not mine."
THAT'S where our thoughts and concerns should be at this moment, not on your -- OUR -- silly damned opinions and politics and morality. Later there will be time enough (and seems like there always is, even when there isn't) to argue and bicker and belabor the "why" and "how" and "what went wrong," but right now to try and use a still-unfolding tragedy as support for some pet belief or cause just seems… staggering gallingly offensively arrogant and self-centered.
Right now it's not about you, or me. It's about us: we have people in harm's way and hurting badly.
If you can't physically help that situation, then have the grace and good manners to stay the hell out of the way and not demand attention for yourself. We'll all then listen to your idiot mewling and lecturing just as soon as our people get loaded into ambulances, OK?
Promise.
An armed man entered the school just an hour or so ago, and for no reason yet known, opened fire. On a school full of innocent kids and teachers.
Right now, reports indicate upwards of 30 people killed, including at least 18 children.
Twitter and Facebook of course are already seeing the usual major camps draw into familiar circles: the conservatives calling for prayers and bemoaning the sad state of our national character vs the liberals working up some outrage over the issue of gun control, and all I can think of is "SHUT UP -- ALL OF YOU!"
We have people down. Kids. Teachers. Parents. Bleeding and wounded and dying and dead. We have parents of 400 kids terrified beyond belief that their children were in this slice of Hell this morning, and then forced to pray the horrible yet understandable "please let the dead include someone else's family and not mine."
THAT'S where our thoughts and concerns should be at this moment, not on your -- OUR -- silly damned opinions and politics and morality. Later there will be time enough (and seems like there always is, even when there isn't) to argue and bicker and belabor the "why" and "how" and "what went wrong," but right now to try and use a still-unfolding tragedy as support for some pet belief or cause just seems… staggering gallingly offensively arrogant and self-centered.
Right now it's not about you, or me. It's about us: we have people in harm's way and hurting badly.
If you can't physically help that situation, then have the grace and good manners to stay the hell out of the way and not demand attention for yourself. We'll all then listen to your idiot mewling and lecturing just as soon as our people get loaded into ambulances, OK?
Promise.
04 December 2012
sucking the thumbs on their feet
So Bank of America credited our mortgage acct with a refund of incorrectly applied fees. They didn't tell me this -- they merely changed the amount due on my mortgage statement this month without explanation or remark. When I called to ask "yo- whassup?" I was bounced through three different offices -- having to re-verify all my acct info and ID every time -- before I was finally told by someone in the Research Office that the refund was for (drumroll...) "fees."
"What fees, assessed when?"
"We don't have that information."
"But you are the ones who charged them."
"Yes. That is correct."
"And you don't know why they were refunded."
"That is correct."
"And you work in the Research Office?"
"Yessir."
"Is your office currently hiring?"
"No, sir. Why do you ask?"
"Seems like a cush job -- get paid to know and do nothing useful."
"Is there anything else I can help you with?"
"'Else'? That kinda sorta implies that you helped on some previous or different matter, now don't it?"
. . .
So today I go to make the monthly mortgage payment, and the refunded fees no longer appear. So I call to ask "yo, whassup?"
Again, bouncing through multiple offices and departments to wind up with someone who says (drumroll...) "we returned them."
"Returned them where?"
"Uh, wherever they came from."
"Which was...?"
"Well, I'm not sure."
"Did you tie them to a balloon and release it out a window?"
"No, sir. Let me check."
[on hold for 4 minutes]
"Hello, sir? We returned them to you."
"To me? Ah. And how did you return them?"
"I don't understand, sir."
"I believe that. I mean 'by what mechanism were the funds returned' -- were they deposited or was a check issued or was a credit made to my balance?"
"Oh... we mailed them."
"Why didn't you just credit my account?"
"Which account, sir?"
"My mortgage account balance due, since that's where it was last time I called."
"Yes, sir, but last Thursday a check was issued."
"And where is this check?"
"You've not received the check, sir?
[deep sigh]
"YES. This has all just been a test. I received the check that I didn't know about for the fees that nobody can explain and I have that check in my hand and that's why I decided to call and waste twenty minutes with you trying to figure out where the money in my hand now exists. (sigh) Is there someone else I can talk to -- someone with some abilities in banking or at least verbal communication?"
"I'm trying to help you, sir."
"And failing. Badly. When was the check mailed, and to what address?"
"Last Thursday, and it was mailed to your home."
"Can you please confirm that address?"
"You need your home address, sir?"
"No -- I know my address. I'm trying to confirm that *you* rocket scientists have it."
"Well... OK."
He confirms that they did in fact mail it to the correct address.
"So why didn't you give me the option of just having the fees deposited into my checking account?"
"We don't know your account details, sir."
"Yes, you do. You send me monthly statements for my mortgage, my line of credit, my checking, and my savings accounts. I'm pretty sure you guys save copies of that info since it's all IN YOUR BANK."
"Well how are we supposed to know that, sir?"
"HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHO YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE? Is that what you are asking me?"
"Yes, sir."
"Would it be easier for you guys to keep track of who your FORMER customers are? I'm starting to get the distinct sense that you guys aren't really keen on the whole 'banking' thing."
[pregnant pause] How else can, er, do you have any more questions, sir?"
"Quite a few, but none that I expect will be answered in this call. I'll just go wait for my check in the mail returning fees from my account assessed for no known reason at no known date by departments unknown within your bank and now refunded for no know reason."
"Very well, sir."
"Oh-- wait. Actually, I *do* have one more question: if and when I receive this mystery check, I'll need to deposit it, and I'm wondering if there will be the traditional hold on that money."
"It will be a standard check subject to all standard treatment and policies."
"So Bank of America is mailing a Bank of America check to a Bank of America customer who will then deposit that Bank of America check into a Bank of America account which will then have those funds on hold for a few days as Bank of America waits to see if Bank of America has funds to cover their own check?"
[pregnant pause] "Yes."
"Excellent. Thank you so much, and good luck."
"Good luck with what, sir?"
"Avoiding accidental self-injury with a spoon. Good bye."
[click]
(sigh)
And so it goes.
people person B
"What fees, assessed when?"
"We don't have that information."
"But you are the ones who charged them."
"Yes. That is correct."
"And you don't know why they were refunded."
"That is correct."
"And you work in the Research Office?"
"Yessir."
"Is your office currently hiring?"
"No, sir. Why do you ask?"
"Seems like a cush job -- get paid to know and do nothing useful."
"Is there anything else I can help you with?"
"'Else'? That kinda sorta implies that you helped on some previous or different matter, now don't it?"
. . .
So today I go to make the monthly mortgage payment, and the refunded fees no longer appear. So I call to ask "yo, whassup?"
Again, bouncing through multiple offices and departments to wind up with someone who says (drumroll...) "we returned them."
"Returned them where?"
"Uh, wherever they came from."
"Which was...?"
"Well, I'm not sure."
"Did you tie them to a balloon and release it out a window?"
"No, sir. Let me check."
[on hold for 4 minutes]
"Hello, sir? We returned them to you."
"To me? Ah. And how did you return them?"
"I don't understand, sir."
"I believe that. I mean 'by what mechanism were the funds returned' -- were they deposited or was a check issued or was a credit made to my balance?"
"Oh... we mailed them."
"Why didn't you just credit my account?"
"Which account, sir?"
"My mortgage account balance due, since that's where it was last time I called."
"Yes, sir, but last Thursday a check was issued."
"And where is this check?"
"You've not received the check, sir?
[deep sigh]
"YES. This has all just been a test. I received the check that I didn't know about for the fees that nobody can explain and I have that check in my hand and that's why I decided to call and waste twenty minutes with you trying to figure out where the money in my hand now exists. (sigh) Is there someone else I can talk to -- someone with some abilities in banking or at least verbal communication?"
"I'm trying to help you, sir."
"And failing. Badly. When was the check mailed, and to what address?"
"Last Thursday, and it was mailed to your home."
"Can you please confirm that address?"
"You need your home address, sir?"
"No -- I know my address. I'm trying to confirm that *you* rocket scientists have it."
"Well... OK."
He confirms that they did in fact mail it to the correct address.
"So why didn't you give me the option of just having the fees deposited into my checking account?"
"We don't know your account details, sir."
"Yes, you do. You send me monthly statements for my mortgage, my line of credit, my checking, and my savings accounts. I'm pretty sure you guys save copies of that info since it's all IN YOUR BANK."
"Well how are we supposed to know that, sir?"
"HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHO YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE? Is that what you are asking me?"
"Yes, sir."
"Would it be easier for you guys to keep track of who your FORMER customers are? I'm starting to get the distinct sense that you guys aren't really keen on the whole 'banking' thing."
[pregnant pause] How else can, er, do you have any more questions, sir?"
"Quite a few, but none that I expect will be answered in this call. I'll just go wait for my check in the mail returning fees from my account assessed for no known reason at no known date by departments unknown within your bank and now refunded for no know reason."
"Very well, sir."
"Oh-- wait. Actually, I *do* have one more question: if and when I receive this mystery check, I'll need to deposit it, and I'm wondering if there will be the traditional hold on that money."
"It will be a standard check subject to all standard treatment and policies."
"So Bank of America is mailing a Bank of America check to a Bank of America customer who will then deposit that Bank of America check into a Bank of America account which will then have those funds on hold for a few days as Bank of America waits to see if Bank of America has funds to cover their own check?"
[pregnant pause] "Yes."
"Excellent. Thank you so much, and good luck."
"Good luck with what, sir?"
"Avoiding accidental self-injury with a spoon. Good bye."
[click]
(sigh)
And so it goes.
people person B
20 July 2012
Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.
I was one of those kids.
The kind from the 60s where rockets and spaceships and astronauts were the coolest thing imaginable. Where every trip to the local Gulf gas station meant an opportunity to claim yet one more NASA-themed collectible: some toy rocket, or pamphlet on spaceflight, or poster about the moon. I drank Tang, because that's what we were going to drink when we traveled to the Moon and Mars and beyond. I had a plush toy Snoopy doll in a NASA suit, complete with oxygen umbilical and "Snoopy" flight cap. I could at a glance tell you the specific differences between all the rockets in the US inventory. I dazzled at the wild artist conceptions of the mighty von Braun-esque winged spaceships depicted in our old encyclopedias.
And on July 20, 1969, I sat there in slack-jawed amazement as every fantastic imagination became a little less fantastic and suddenly a lot more possible as we, the people of Earth, watched one of our own step out for the first time onto the surface of another world.
To kids today, it's difficult to fully explain the monumental sea-change that event represented. We've walked on another world.
Never again could our species say "this planet is the limit of our reach." Never again would a child be born into a world where men had not traveled through the deathly empty black of space to leave prints on the face of that white disk smiling down at us from the night sky since our first ancestors looked up.
From now on, the sky is no longer the limit. From now on, there are no limits.
–––––
Somehow, in the intervening decades, we've lost that feeling. Instead of a world where we might achieve any goal if we set our collective will to it, we bemoan all those things we accept as somehow beyond our control.
The planet is warming. The oceans are dying. Our institutions are failing. Our leaders are corrupt, our favorite foods are killing us, pointless wars and fighting seem to be escalating wherever we look.
And still the Moon smiles down at us, amused at our petty worries and distractions.
Remember me? You used to find me so amazing -- so tantalizing. Now... you stare at your feet and mumble about how far you've sunk.
I liked looking up and wondering what miracles I might see in my future. I liked it a lot. And I miss that feeling.
And so, to the men and women of the Apollo program, on the occasion of the anniversary of quite possibly the Coolest Moment Man Has Yet Managed, a geeky red-headed kid from the 60s again says "thank you."
The kind from the 60s where rockets and spaceships and astronauts were the coolest thing imaginable. Where every trip to the local Gulf gas station meant an opportunity to claim yet one more NASA-themed collectible: some toy rocket, or pamphlet on spaceflight, or poster about the moon. I drank Tang, because that's what we were going to drink when we traveled to the Moon and Mars and beyond. I had a plush toy Snoopy doll in a NASA suit, complete with oxygen umbilical and "Snoopy" flight cap. I could at a glance tell you the specific differences between all the rockets in the US inventory. I dazzled at the wild artist conceptions of the mighty von Braun-esque winged spaceships depicted in our old encyclopedias.
And on July 20, 1969, I sat there in slack-jawed amazement as every fantastic imagination became a little less fantastic and suddenly a lot more possible as we, the people of Earth, watched one of our own step out for the first time onto the surface of another world.
To kids today, it's difficult to fully explain the monumental sea-change that event represented. We've walked on another world.
Never again could our species say "this planet is the limit of our reach." Never again would a child be born into a world where men had not traveled through the deathly empty black of space to leave prints on the face of that white disk smiling down at us from the night sky since our first ancestors looked up.
From now on, the sky is no longer the limit. From now on, there are no limits.
–––––
Somehow, in the intervening decades, we've lost that feeling. Instead of a world where we might achieve any goal if we set our collective will to it, we bemoan all those things we accept as somehow beyond our control.
The planet is warming. The oceans are dying. Our institutions are failing. Our leaders are corrupt, our favorite foods are killing us, pointless wars and fighting seem to be escalating wherever we look.
And still the Moon smiles down at us, amused at our petty worries and distractions.
Remember me? You used to find me so amazing -- so tantalizing. Now... you stare at your feet and mumble about how far you've sunk.
I liked looking up and wondering what miracles I might see in my future. I liked it a lot. And I miss that feeling.
And so, to the men and women of the Apollo program, on the occasion of the anniversary of quite possibly the Coolest Moment Man Has Yet Managed, a geeky red-headed kid from the 60s again says "thank you."
04 July 2012
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
• He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
• He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
• He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
• He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
• He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
• He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
• He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
• He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
• He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
• He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
• He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
• He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
-- For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
-- For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
-- For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
-- For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
-- For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
-- For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
-- For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
-- For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
-- For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
• He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
• He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
• He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
• He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
• He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Happy Birthday, old girl.
08 May 2012
This one hurts
"Where The Wild Things Are" is probably my favorite book, ever. It was written right around the time I was born, so I came into a world that had never seen that book, and I've grown up never knowing a world that didn't have that book.
I recall learning how to read for myself around age 4, and I recall all the Seuss books for their silly word fun, but it was Sendak's wild phantasm that totally swallowed me like some great wild beast. The world of that book was wild, dark, and somehow both dangerous and enticing at once. I recall spending long afternoons as a small child just staring at the pictures-- focusing on the tiny droplets of ink, as if somehow the pixelation itself might reveal another even more magical amazing world hidden between the colors of every frame, every graphical element.
Because magic is real, if you really want it to be.
I remember trying to imagine a world where such beasts might be real -- what might possibly explain their form and anatomy, their odd traditions, the geography of the ocean and forests. I owned a pair of cotton footy pajamas which I wore and secretly pretended gave me the power to travel, like Max, to the land of the Wild Things.
The book was, for all practical purposes, my first love affair. I recall marveling that "there's this guy named Maurice Sendak, and he just sat down and made this up. How cool is THAT?"
Pretty cool.
I carried the book with me through college, and it survived on through to marriage, and then, eventually, to the arrival of my own children. And when I started to have kids, each of them got their own copy of Wild Things. It was not a fact that I specifically ever explained to anyone -- at no point did I ever sit any of the kids down and say "and here's your magic book, and I hope it serves you as well as mine has me." That kind of overt sentimentality would have been totally counter to the Wild Things, to Sendak. Instead, I just gave them their book, and we'd then read it nightly, and we'd do the faces and make the growls and show our terrible claws and roll our terrible eyes, and then, like Max, every night we'd return to the world of the Real. And there was soup, and cake, and milk, and all was good.
For almost ten straight years, this was a nightly thing in my world, as each of four kids drifted through that young age where this book could fascinate and amaze and dazzle. Thousands of nights where I and some strange wild thing that carried some portion of my DNA would sail off through night and day
and in an out of weeks
and almost over a year
to where the wild things are.
And again, that book proved to me just how real magic might be.
And today I wake and find that Sendak has left this world and sailed on to another, and all I can think is Oh please don't go -- we'll eat you up -- we love you so!
And I wish I could wear my wolf suit and make mischief of some kind, and say "thanks."
.
.
.
B
I recall learning how to read for myself around age 4, and I recall all the Seuss books for their silly word fun, but it was Sendak's wild phantasm that totally swallowed me like some great wild beast. The world of that book was wild, dark, and somehow both dangerous and enticing at once. I recall spending long afternoons as a small child just staring at the pictures-- focusing on the tiny droplets of ink, as if somehow the pixelation itself might reveal another even more magical amazing world hidden between the colors of every frame, every graphical element.
Because magic is real, if you really want it to be.
I remember trying to imagine a world where such beasts might be real -- what might possibly explain their form and anatomy, their odd traditions, the geography of the ocean and forests. I owned a pair of cotton footy pajamas which I wore and secretly pretended gave me the power to travel, like Max, to the land of the Wild Things.
The book was, for all practical purposes, my first love affair. I recall marveling that "there's this guy named Maurice Sendak, and he just sat down and made this up. How cool is THAT?"
Pretty cool.
I carried the book with me through college, and it survived on through to marriage, and then, eventually, to the arrival of my own children. And when I started to have kids, each of them got their own copy of Wild Things. It was not a fact that I specifically ever explained to anyone -- at no point did I ever sit any of the kids down and say "and here's your magic book, and I hope it serves you as well as mine has me." That kind of overt sentimentality would have been totally counter to the Wild Things, to Sendak. Instead, I just gave them their book, and we'd then read it nightly, and we'd do the faces and make the growls and show our terrible claws and roll our terrible eyes, and then, like Max, every night we'd return to the world of the Real. And there was soup, and cake, and milk, and all was good.
For almost ten straight years, this was a nightly thing in my world, as each of four kids drifted through that young age where this book could fascinate and amaze and dazzle. Thousands of nights where I and some strange wild thing that carried some portion of my DNA would sail off through night and day
and in an out of weeks
and almost over a year
to where the wild things are.
And again, that book proved to me just how real magic might be.
And today I wake and find that Sendak has left this world and sailed on to another, and all I can think is Oh please don't go -- we'll eat you up -- we love you so!
And I wish I could wear my wolf suit and make mischief of some kind, and say "thanks."
.
.
.
B
21 April 2012
Can you see that you will always be my friend?
So today is April 21, which is San Jacinto Day, the day that Texas won her independence from Mexico in 1836 when General Sam Houston's forces surprised and defeated the hugely superior force of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. And San Jacinto Day also happens to be the day of Aggie Muster, a sacred occasion when Aggies worldwide gather and remember fallen comrades and friends. If you're an Aggie, it's among the most solemn of all traditions.
Today I spent the day with my two younger kids, off on a school trip which is largely irrelevant to this post except to say if there was any doubt (and there ought have been none), a howling Merlin engine on a low-level *does* in fact harmonize beautifully with a children's choir.
It was a gorgeous glorious day, and a good time was had by all. We drive back in time to catch The Wife on the patio at our local Tex-Mex place, as she's heading to work, and we scarfed down the last of her chips and salsa and hugged her goodbye and then headed on home ourselves.
The kids headed out to play, so I plopped down to sneak in a few minutes work on a long-simmering script project: basically a thinly reworked heavily auto-biographical revisitation of the idiocy of my college days at A&M. And as I am making some changes to the final "curtain call" sort of scene, I hear the music from the final scenes of DANCES WITH WOLVES, and I immediately recognize it as that incredibly awesome moment when Wind In His Hair says goodbye to Dances With Wolves by shouting from the top of the valley overlooking his friend and the rest of the tribe:
And I'm sitting there hearing that scene in my head as I write about my own best friends from college -- some of whom are tragically no longer with us, and some of whom I remembered *at* Muster ceremonies in years past -- and it's April 21, Muster Day, and I'm drinking a Shiner Bock exactly as I did those many years ago when the scenes and memories in my screenplay were not just lies on a page but actual people and events and exchanges and (alleged) offenses, and somehow it's all just too damned perfect, so all I can do is lean back teary-eyed but smiling, and give a beer toast to the sky:
"Well played, Universe. Well played."
And to all you DG idiots, rejects and defectives who helped make worth remembering what in lesser hands might have been only moments of justifiable shame, I say "thanks for the (plausibly deniable) memories."
.
.
.
maroon-tinted glasses B
Today I spent the day with my two younger kids, off on a school trip which is largely irrelevant to this post except to say if there was any doubt (and there ought have been none), a howling Merlin engine on a low-level *does* in fact harmonize beautifully with a children's choir.
It was a gorgeous glorious day, and a good time was had by all. We drive back in time to catch The Wife on the patio at our local Tex-Mex place, as she's heading to work, and we scarfed down the last of her chips and salsa and hugged her goodbye and then headed on home ourselves.
The kids headed out to play, so I plopped down to sneak in a few minutes work on a long-simmering script project: basically a thinly reworked heavily auto-biographical revisitation of the idiocy of my college days at A&M. And as I am making some changes to the final "curtain call" sort of scene, I hear the music from the final scenes of DANCES WITH WOLVES, and I immediately recognize it as that incredibly awesome moment when Wind In His Hair says goodbye to Dances With Wolves by shouting from the top of the valley overlooking his friend and the rest of the tribe:
And I'm sitting there hearing that scene in my head as I write about my own best friends from college -- some of whom are tragically no longer with us, and some of whom I remembered *at* Muster ceremonies in years past -- and it's April 21, Muster Day, and I'm drinking a Shiner Bock exactly as I did those many years ago when the scenes and memories in my screenplay were not just lies on a page but actual people and events and exchanges and (alleged) offenses, and somehow it's all just too damned perfect, so all I can do is lean back teary-eyed but smiling, and give a beer toast to the sky:
"Well played, Universe. Well played."
And to all you DG idiots, rejects and defectives who helped make worth remembering what in lesser hands might have been only moments of justifiable shame, I say "thanks for the (plausibly deniable) memories."
.
.
.
maroon-tinted glasses B
21 March 2012
Greatest Song Lyrics Ever, vol. 86
"Slidell" by Grayson Capps
I heard they cleaned the wreck outsida Slidell
just before the dawn
I heard five people got murdered
by a drunk woman talking on her cell phone
I got drunk last night in Slidell
waiting on the clean up crew
I've been on the road for fifteen days
waiting just to get home to you.
Just before the dawn--
-- you hear the rooster crow
Just before the dawn--
-- I'm gonna rise up... rise up... slow
Nighttime driving is like a dream
Hallucinations rise up from the road
It's lonesome at five am
when the white line becomes your soul
Just as the sun begins to rise
the highway is foggy as hell
And all the musicians are sleeping
You ain't got nothin but yourself
Just before the dawn--
--you hear the rooster crow
Just before the dawn--
--I'm gonna rise up... rise up... slow
I heard they cleaned up the wreck outsida Slidell
just before I passed through
I've been sitting for five hours on this barstool
Waiting... and thinkin 'bout you
-----
True genius almost always seems simple.
.
.
.
B
Click To Play in Spotify
I heard they cleaned the wreck outsida Slidell
just before the dawn
I heard five people got murdered
by a drunk woman talking on her cell phone
I got drunk last night in Slidell
waiting on the clean up crew
I've been on the road for fifteen days
waiting just to get home to you.
Just before the dawn--
-- you hear the rooster crow
Just before the dawn--
-- I'm gonna rise up... rise up... slow
Nighttime driving is like a dream
Hallucinations rise up from the road
It's lonesome at five am
when the white line becomes your soul
Just as the sun begins to rise
the highway is foggy as hell
And all the musicians are sleeping
You ain't got nothin but yourself
Just before the dawn--
--you hear the rooster crow
Just before the dawn--
--I'm gonna rise up... rise up... slow
I heard they cleaned up the wreck outsida Slidell
just before I passed through
I've been sitting for five hours on this barstool
Waiting... and thinkin 'bout you
-----
True genius almost always seems simple.
.
.
.
B
Click To Play in Spotify
19 January 2012
So You Wanna Call Yourself A "Coach"?
Then go read THIS.
It's the final send-off from (former) Texas Aggies football coach Mike Sherman to a long list of hundreds of Texas high school football coaches, a sort of combination thank you/so long/keep in mind sermon wherein Sherman defines and delineates several concepts which he feels are paramount to successful coaches.
And what's most cool is how most of the concepts do not really limit themselves to football coaching application.
Sure, advice like "Never Pass Up an Opportunity to Practice Tackling" might be rather specific and limited in non-football application, but when the bulk of the (long) letter addresses such Big Issue concerns as Respect and Truth and Honesty and Love... you know you're not reading a normal piece of football coaching rah-rah.
As a parent (x4!) who has spent a lot of time -- a whooooole lot... (oy) -- coaching youth sports, I have a pathetic familiarity with a lot of the emotions Sherman describes, and I like to think that I've come to share at least some of his values and beliefs. At least I hope so, because when I read Sherman's letter I want to send it to every coach I've ever worked with or against and shout "See!?! THIS is what I've been saying -- THIS is what it's about! THIS is why we're really here -- not for some silly damned plastic and fake marble trophy or some stupid aluminim medal or some bilious scrap of colored ribbon!"
When I read this:
I want to stand and cheer, as it reminds me that there is Hope and Good out there, and there are people out there fighting to defend these ideas, and there are men and women carrying these notions into the lives of hundreds of thousands of young kids who deserve to know and feel and experience and cherish all that should be most wonderful in Sport.
I have no idea where Coach Sherman will wind up in his next job, but I know these two things: whatever team he inherits will have the rare and wonderful opportunity to be led by a true gentleman, and I will become an immediate fan of whatever team he leads.
Thanks for your time in Aggieland, Coach.
.
.
.
B
It's the final send-off from (former) Texas Aggies football coach Mike Sherman to a long list of hundreds of Texas high school football coaches, a sort of combination thank you/so long/keep in mind sermon wherein Sherman defines and delineates several concepts which he feels are paramount to successful coaches.
And what's most cool is how most of the concepts do not really limit themselves to football coaching application.
Sure, advice like "Never Pass Up an Opportunity to Practice Tackling" might be rather specific and limited in non-football application, but when the bulk of the (long) letter addresses such Big Issue concerns as Respect and Truth and Honesty and Love... you know you're not reading a normal piece of football coaching rah-rah.
As a parent (x4!) who has spent a lot of time -- a whooooole lot... (oy) -- coaching youth sports, I have a pathetic familiarity with a lot of the emotions Sherman describes, and I like to think that I've come to share at least some of his values and beliefs. At least I hope so, because when I read Sherman's letter I want to send it to every coach I've ever worked with or against and shout "See!?! THIS is what I've been saying -- THIS is what it's about! THIS is why we're really here -- not for some silly damned plastic and fake marble trophy or some stupid aluminim medal or some bilious scrap of colored ribbon!"
When I read this:
We must never lose sight, however, that with the opportunity to coach these young men and experience victory together, there also comes the huge responsibility to make a difference in their lives. We must never lose sight of the fact: "once their coach always their coach." Where others may have failed them, we as coaches cannot. Where others have created mistrust, we must bring trust. Where others have created disrespect, we must bring respect. Where others have let them down, we must support them. We owe that to them regardless of their talent or ability. We owe that to them regardless of wins and losses.
I want to stand and cheer, as it reminds me that there is Hope and Good out there, and there are people out there fighting to defend these ideas, and there are men and women carrying these notions into the lives of hundreds of thousands of young kids who deserve to know and feel and experience and cherish all that should be most wonderful in Sport.
I have no idea where Coach Sherman will wind up in his next job, but I know these two things: whatever team he inherits will have the rare and wonderful opportunity to be led by a true gentleman, and I will become an immediate fan of whatever team he leads.
Thanks for your time in Aggieland, Coach.
.
.
.
B
06 December 2011
First Ten Verbs 2011
Back in the halcyon days of 2006 -- when the Internet still seemed interesting and amusing rather than just overrun with howler monkeys and hardcore Miracle Whip addicts -- I posted a meme wherein writer-type folks were asked/encouraged/ordered to post the first ten verbs from whatever project they were then currently working on:
A Bucket Of Love: Your First Ten Verbs (April 2006)
"Why?" you ask in that typically sniveling and mewling nasal tone of yours which sets all right-thinking people's nerves well on edge.
"SHUT UP," I explain.
And then I continue with another ref to that long ago post:
So here's mine:
Your turn, gravy-suckers.
.
.
.
bored and hostile B
A Bucket Of Love: Your First Ten Verbs (April 2006)
"Why?" you ask in that typically sniveling and mewling nasal tone of yours which sets all right-thinking people's nerves well on edge.
"SHUT UP," I explain.
And then I continue with another ref to that long ago post:
The exercise is intended to help you more clearly notice when your writing is passive and lackluster. In most cases (there are always exceptions) it's usually best to start strong and maintain momentum. If you look up and realize that you have a lot of "is" and "waits" and "sits" and "lays" as opening verbs, you might wanna give your opening a kick in the pants. Maybe.
So here's mine:
1. munch
2. stomp
3. roars
4. slaps
5. begins
6. speaks
7. screams
8. drops
9. scope
10. starts
Your turn, gravy-suckers.
.
.
.
bored and hostile B
Greatest Song Lyrics Ever, vol 102
"Stomp & Holler," by Hayes Carll
Oh, Little Johhny Walker caught a bullet last night
Running from the guitar store
He took a left down the alley, guess he should've gone right
Now he ain't taken nothing no more more more
Everybody knows it's a hard time
Livin' with hate and the greed
Most folks earn what they get for a livin'
Others just steal what they need
Down on the corner, already talkin'
How they're gonna cut that take
I'm out here just workin' for a dollar
And all I wanna do is stomp and holler...
Oh, eighteen years, eighteen years
That's a long-old time to be
Sittin' face down, stoned in the alley
Wonderin' how to get to that shinin' sea
Everybody knows it's a hard time
Livin' on the minimum wage
Ah, some people just gonna sneak on through
Others gotta rattle that cage
One of these days, I'm gonna find my way
Or else just disappear
I'm out here in the filth and squalor
And all I wanna do is stomp and holler...
Oh, rock and roll, ache and moan
Listen to the young girls scream
Every time I get a little bit lucky
I gotta wake up from a poor man's dream
Heaven only knows how we get there
After all this trouble and strife
From all I've seen, you only get one shot
At what you're gonna do in this life
Ah, what the hell, I guess I might as well
Take a chance and try my way
I'm like James Brown only white and taller
And all I wanna do is stomp and holler....
-----
[beer salute]
puttering through the gutter B
Oh, Little Johhny Walker caught a bullet last night
Running from the guitar store
He took a left down the alley, guess he should've gone right
Now he ain't taken nothing no more more more
Everybody knows it's a hard time
Livin' with hate and the greed
Most folks earn what they get for a livin'
Others just steal what they need
Down on the corner, already talkin'
How they're gonna cut that take
I'm out here just workin' for a dollar
And all I wanna do is stomp and holler...
Oh, eighteen years, eighteen years
That's a long-old time to be
Sittin' face down, stoned in the alley
Wonderin' how to get to that shinin' sea
Everybody knows it's a hard time
Livin' on the minimum wage
Ah, some people just gonna sneak on through
Others gotta rattle that cage
One of these days, I'm gonna find my way
Or else just disappear
I'm out here in the filth and squalor
And all I wanna do is stomp and holler...
Oh, rock and roll, ache and moan
Listen to the young girls scream
Every time I get a little bit lucky
I gotta wake up from a poor man's dream
Heaven only knows how we get there
After all this trouble and strife
From all I've seen, you only get one shot
At what you're gonna do in this life
Ah, what the hell, I guess I might as well
Take a chance and try my way
I'm like James Brown only white and taller
And all I wanna do is stomp and holler....
-----
[beer salute]
puttering through the gutter B
28 November 2011
OCTOPI WALL STREET!
So back on October 7, right after the time this whole "OCCUPY" thing was starting to grab traction online and become an oft-reffed meme in the social media universe, I spent maybe 6.27 minutes cobbling together a really childish pun based upon a favorite shot from the old 1955 Ray Harryhausen classic "IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA", wherein a giant cephalopod was mutated by Atomic Testing and decided to attack San Francisco as a reaction. I posted the silly pic to Facebook on the evening of October 7, 2011.
I guess people liked it, as it kinda sorta took off and ran away from home, playing in the cyber-yards of a whooooole lot more people than I know or have met. On Facebook I can track that it has been "shared" just under 3000 times, but I have no way of knowing how many times it was re-copied and re-posted and re-shared, or linked via Twitter of posted onto blogs or MySpace or Google+ or Arpanet or whatever else is out there this week.
This afternoon I get a request for some info from some magazine guy wanting a copy.
Serious stabs at screenwriting creativity -- those I can't give away. But childish paste-ups of rampaging seafood? That's gold, Jerry! GOLD!
.
.
.
screwed blue B
I guess people liked it, as it kinda sorta took off and ran away from home, playing in the cyber-yards of a whooooole lot more people than I know or have met. On Facebook I can track that it has been "shared" just under 3000 times, but I have no way of knowing how many times it was re-copied and re-posted and re-shared, or linked via Twitter of posted onto blogs or MySpace or Google+ or Arpanet or whatever else is out there this week.
This afternoon I get a request for some info from some magazine guy wanting a copy.
Serious stabs at screenwriting creativity -- those I can't give away. But childish paste-ups of rampaging seafood? That's gold, Jerry! GOLD!
.
.
.
screwed blue B
26 October 2011
AFF 2011: Day 0 -- I Have A Dream
Before I embark on what might well end up an aborted attempt to blog my way through a replay of my 2011 Austin Film Festival (AFF) experiences, I think I'll share a dream I had the night before the conference opened. It was Wednesday night, I'd already checked in and had my credentials and IDs and invites and such, had already had some beers in the Driskill, had already had multiple way-cool screenwriterly experiences as part of this year's conference, and already had good times catching up with far-flung friends whom I only get to see maybe once a year at this specific event. So by all rights, I was surely "in a good place," mentally speaking, right?
No, fair reader -- with my brain, no such assumption is ever safe or well-founded.
I doze off to cerveza-stoked slumber in the Stephen F Austin hotel, and somewhere between 4:30am and wakeup time around 7am, I had a dream.
I see the main Ballroom of the Driskill Hotel, the room where many of the biggest and most popular panels in the conference always get booked. It usually seats several hundred guests, but in the dream, it's empty, save for one chair set alone, by itself, in the middle of the huge quiet room.
I'm in the chair, in my cargo shorts and t-shirt, backpack hung from one knee, notepad on my other leg, as I wait to take notes.
On the stage... maybe a dozen panelists -- all the usual suspects of name writers who I've met at Austin and in most cases developed some slight relationship with. I recall seeing Dan Petrie, Terry Rossio, John August, Lawrence Kasdan, Craig Mazin, Shane Black, as well as maybe a half dozen other faces which now are just gray shadows in memory. They are all just sitting there in their tall director's chairs, look down at me well back in the huge room. Some have their arms crossed and have that stern not entirely pleased expression I recall from way too many "talks with the professor" in college.
I recall glancing at my watch in the dream, as if I am anxious about starting whatever it is which is supposed to be going on, and then Petrie leans forward to his microphone:
I recall looking around the room, as instructed, and recall seeing a lot of open space and nobody else.
And then I wake up.
And I rub my eyes, and I mumble something like "thanks a lot, God. Hell of a dream to drop on me the night before the conference kicks off."
I'd offer that perhaps this last lament was perhaps heard, as I feel I was offered a "make up call" later in the conference, but offering details about that here would be *spoilers*.
Still. This dream struck me as a rather harsh and sadistic fantasy to hose into someone's subconscious at such an ostensibly propitious moment.
At the minimum, somebody owes me a damned fruit cup.
.
.
.
B
No, fair reader -- with my brain, no such assumption is ever safe or well-founded.
I doze off to cerveza-stoked slumber in the Stephen F Austin hotel, and somewhere between 4:30am and wakeup time around 7am, I had a dream.
I see the main Ballroom of the Driskill Hotel, the room where many of the biggest and most popular panels in the conference always get booked. It usually seats several hundred guests, but in the dream, it's empty, save for one chair set alone, by itself, in the middle of the huge quiet room.
I'm in the chair, in my cargo shorts and t-shirt, backpack hung from one knee, notepad on my other leg, as I wait to take notes.
On the stage... maybe a dozen panelists -- all the usual suspects of name writers who I've met at Austin and in most cases developed some slight relationship with. I recall seeing Dan Petrie, Terry Rossio, John August, Lawrence Kasdan, Craig Mazin, Shane Black, as well as maybe a half dozen other faces which now are just gray shadows in memory. They are all just sitting there in their tall director's chairs, look down at me well back in the huge room. Some have their arms crossed and have that stern not entirely pleased expression I recall from way too many "talks with the professor" in college.
I recall glancing at my watch in the dream, as if I am anxious about starting whatever it is which is supposed to be going on, and then Petrie leans forward to his microphone:
DAN PETRIE
So, Brett... WHY are you still out there? Why
aren't you up here on this side of the mike?
BRETT
I... I dunno.
TERRY ROSSIO
It's not really a question of not knowing
something. We've told you -- all of us --
more than enough for you to figure this out.
What's the problem?
BRETT
I... I dunno.
SHANE BLACK
Jesus Christ, man. Just fucking do it,
already. Look around you!
I recall looking around the room, as instructed, and recall seeing a lot of open space and nobody else.
And then I wake up.
And I rub my eyes, and I mumble something like "thanks a lot, God. Hell of a dream to drop on me the night before the conference kicks off."
I'd offer that perhaps this last lament was perhaps heard, as I feel I was offered a "make up call" later in the conference, but offering details about that here would be *spoilers*.
Still. This dream struck me as a rather harsh and sadistic fantasy to hose into someone's subconscious at such an ostensibly propitious moment.
At the minimum, somebody owes me a damned fruit cup.
.
.
.
B
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