The Great Red Shark

The Things I Would Say

2006-04-13T11:37:00.000-07:00

One year ago I wrote a blog about the first anniversary of my mother’s passing. Just yesterday my son asked me if I held any regrets in my heart, anything that I was sorry I had not done or said.

It seems so cliché, but the truth is I regret taking her for granted. I always thought she would be here, always waiting just behind her apartment door with some fresh cookies and a half-finished crossword.

I never thought about the day when I wouldn’t be able to email her for a favorite recipe or call to see if she had picked up my son from school because it was raining. I never thought there would be things I could not share with her.

This summer I will be four years cancer-free, but when I worry about a relapse, one of the things that scare me about that possibility is that she wouldn’t be here to talk to. I also know that she will never again sit at the foot of my bed and tell me everything will be okay.

So many times I was dropping by to pick up my son, or to bring something to her, or to get something from her, and I hurried along, so worried about the next place I had to be (or even just wanting to get home to unwind, decompress from the long work day). But as is so often the case, I didn’t think about the time when I wouldn’t be able to see her—the time when I wouldn’t have the luxury of her laugh or the gift of her comforting presence.

I try to tell my son how proud she would have been to see him becoming the young man he is, and how I am sure she still watches over him. I want him to understand how precious life is and how quickly it is gone, but how can I convince him?

I myself was never convinced.

Indeed it seems I am still not convinced. I trudge along as if there will be a never-ending parade of tomorrows. I procrastinate; I put off until tomorrow what I could easily do today—or worse, I wait to say the things that might never get to be said.

So to her I say:

I miss you so much, Mom. The weather is turning warm and the days are so much longer and I know you would love it. I have so many things in my heart that I wish I could share with you. Sometimes I feel frozen in time because I can’t admit you aren’t here anymore. I envy those who still have both their parents. I think about the fact that you are in a place so far beyond the sadness of this world that I should be happy for you, but I can’t help being so very, very brokenhearted just the same. When you were here I don’t know if made you feel special, but you were. You were my mother in so many ways that I couldn’t begin to write them here. You never let me down. Not ever. There were times I know you felt you had so little to give me, but that was only in a material sense. Within your soul you had every good thing in the world, and I always knew it.

I will never get over losing you.

The backseat is quiet.

El Jefe Is Watching

2006-03-25T07:47:00.000-08:00

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

—George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

I graduated high school in 1983, and read the book that same year. I have to admit, aside from it’s great storyline and superb literary merit, the book was hard to take seriously, considering the predicted year was just around the corner and the irrefutable evidence that Flock of Seagulls was still on the pop charts.

(I figured if a government was really serious about manufacturing such a dystopian reality, it would take at least a decade to live down the absurdity of allowing a country where the above could ever happen at all…can you imagine the Score brothers in the Kremlin? Okay, bad example…)

Seriously, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a great novel, and some of the most lingeringly chilling ideas came from this great literary mind (Orwell wrote the book in Scotland in 1948—the last two digits were reversed, so it was less of a prophecy than a statement of fear anyway).

The point is, I have never been much for conspiracy theories, or the idea that the U.S. Government is (or could ever be) totalitarian in it’s construct. I may be naïve—I have been accused of worse—but my opinion of the government leans more toward a huge lumbering beast that is more at risk of collapsing under it’s own clumsy mass than one capable of putting it’s citizens under the thumb of an autocratic regime.

That said, and understanding first and foremost that I never claimed to the be the most politically scientific bulb in the shed, two things happened to me this week that sent an Orwellian shiver down my spine (to be completely honest, it was more of a Kafkaesque, Circean, and without a doubt, downright Luddite shiver).

**Apologies to anyone with eponumousophobia—the all too real, but far lesser known, fear of eponyms.**

1. I watched Good Night, and Good Luck, the incredible docudrama by George Clooney (who has yet to staple the world with Clooneyesque but whose historical antagonist spawned one of the most well-known eponyms of the twentieth century—and, for the record, scared the holy bejezzus out of me).

and

2. I read the following Time article (from last year) that, among other things, detailed the “tightening” of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control policy regarding U.S. citizens importing or consuming Cuban cigars:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1054968,00.html?cnn=yes

On the movie:

The experience was honestly chilling. Being born two decades after the “Junior Senator from Wisconsin” began (and was subsequently desisted from continuing) his harrowing but unsubstantiated mudslinging, I did not understand the reality in which his blacklisting, combined with a climate of fear catalyzed by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), became sinister enough to cause the suicides of a great many Americans wrongly accused of traitorous behavior. I have to admit the film invited me to think about the power of the government—power not necessarily of absolute nature, but the deceptively strong arm of communication of thought through the media, ala Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Could society again be marauded into believing anything simply by beaming one man’s version of the truth into our frightened cubbies each evening?

Hmmm.

On cigar smoking:

The article on the Cuban tobacco embargo (as a subset of the larger) seemed more light-hearted to me on the surface, particularly in the context of a picture of then House Majority Leader Tom Delay—who considered the Cuban regime a “thugocracy” and was a huge proponent of said embargo—partaking of the effervescence of a mild Hoyo de Monterrey (made in “Habana”).

The truth is, however, the idea of, in 2004, the Department of Treasury still taking this 41 year-old proclamation so seriously—an act that claimed nearly a half-century ago to have the ability to destroy Castro’s dictatorship by denying Americans any sort of travel or enjoyment of an entire country’s exports, but has since failed miserably—then also extending it’s authority to foreign soils??? Against smoking a cigar made from Cuban tobacco??

Color me flabbergasted. And, more appropriately, in the words of Seinfeldian Jackie Chiles, attorney of record against Big Tobacco:

“Lewd, lascivious, salacious, outrageous!”

Please. Even in 2004, in the day and age of al-Qa’dia and Islamic Jihad against the United States—indeed three years after two jet airliners took out the Twin Towers as a horrified public looked on helplessly—the Treasury Department still believing so fervently that American tourists not smoking Cuban cigars would somehow make a difference??

Martha, throw some cold water on my face. Maybe I will wake up in Oceania, where at least the government knew how to do a respectable job of societal control. I can’t imagine the Thought Police or the Ministry of Truth caring one way or the other if I smoked a Swisher Sweets or a, ahem, Diplimatico.

Of course, they’d all be illegal, but that just goes to show you that any totalitarian government worth its salt would never allow for something as petty as brand discrimination when it came to putting the thumb on leisure activity.

The backseat is quiet.

A Million Little Hypocrites

2006-02-03T16:02:00.000-08:00

This past two weeks have been difficult for James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces. I was one of those who, although I am not an alcoholic or a drug user, was moved by Frey’s touching memoir—enough so that I bought his second book My Friend Leonard, based on a character from the first.

Let me say this outright: I am still moved by Frey’s memoir. And I enjoyed the second book as well.

Writing is a delicate thing and not born of a black and white world. For one thing, drama sells. Plain and simple. Write about a trip to the corner store to buy a loaf of bread and a quart of buttermilk and few care to read what you have to say, regardless of a potential point buried within. Alter the same grocery trek slightly to include an insidious drug dealer, a gun, and set the story at night instead of on a sunny, uneventful morning, and voila! Interest is piqued. The underlying storyline or point may not change, but the writing has taken the dramatic turn, if only for entertainment purposes (and, of course, to make the piece saleable).

I watched Oprah this past week to see her second interview with Frey, primarily because, like many people, I wanted to find out what was true and what wasn’t. This was due more to morbid curiosity than it was my questioning the validity or impact of the book.

What I walked away with was the coppery taste of hypocrisy in my mouth.

Oprah questioning the act of cultivating drama around a person’s life story? Oprah wondering how someone could possibly exaggerate the facts surrounding dark events in order to sensationalize?

Is this not like McDonalds crying foul because the latest health reports evidence an obese society?

What would an Oprah story be if not scripted and edited for dramatic effect, or devoid of an audience of devout followers ready to thunder applause or shed a tear on cue? Face it, an Oprah story is nothing without the contextual smoothing of a good production team.

So she gives away a bunch of cars…if you are going to give an audience of ne’er-hads each a new car out of the pureness of your heart, why do it on national television—why not do it discreetly and with personal disclaimers that the receiving parties will never divulge the source? In fact, if the raw truth is all that matters, why have a publicity agent or writers or make-up artists or editors at all?? Why not keep it real, just as it is, take the good with the bad and don’t edit or massage a thing?

For one thing because the raw truth a billionaire magnate does not make. The entirety of Oprah’s canon is scripted, edited, put to music. Does this mean her motivations are any less sincere or that the story’s central point isn’t true? I don’t believe so. But it does implicate the queen of daytime television in a directed plot to sell more commercials, blast the competition in the ratings game, and make 1.3 billion bucks.

In other words: The American Dream.

In my opinion, James Frey was guilty of exaggeration, not artifice. He took creative license with a memoir. Should a memoir be made of the basic essence of truth? Yes. But does this mean that to make a better read, to reach more of the intended audience—heck, even to make more money—that the author cannot or should not take some creative license and make the girlfriend more pure, the best friend more loyal, the fights more animated, the injuries more gruesome—(yes, even the jail sentence longer)?

We allow corporations, advertisers, government, and even talk show divas, to pull the wool over our eyes so often that we must cut eyeholes to have any hope of finding the unvarnished truth.

Spin doctors, producers, editors, publicists: why even acknowledge these plastic surgeons of media and personality, Oprah, much less give them employment, if you are a champion of the unvarnished, unscripted, uncivilized truth?

The irony here is that Doubleday—the publisher Oprah would have you believe responsible for this faux pax—was not the true catalyst in the book’s meteoric rise to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Oprah was. By bestowing the coveted “Book Club” stamp of approval she single-handedly launched this ship of questionable content.

Where was the crack staff of—as Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen so adamantly suggested—$25,000 to $30,000-a-year fact-checkers for the Oprah Book Club? Cohen claimed they’d be able uncover the truth in “a half-hour” of fact-checking. Of course, he was referring to the book publishers…but in this case, why does Oprah feel she is immune from the same criteria?

The talk show diva claimed she questioned the validity of some of the book’s scenes as she read them (“how could this possibly be true?”). So what did Oprah—who presumably understood what her endorsement would mean to this memoir full of “red flags”—do?

She blessed it, and a million loyal subjects followed her recommendation.

But according to Oprah, Doubleday is at fault for not ferreting out the truth—a truth that apparently, despite the red flags and transparency, escaped her army of resources as well.

I submit Frey did what any successful writer does: he crafted a piece of literature. A memoir is still just a story; the story of one’s life, as told from the soul of the author. A memoir is written to reach others who might benefit (or even, God forbid, be entertained) from the telling.

In the case of A Million Little Pieces could the publisher have made things clearer with a “Based on a True Story” tagline? Probably. But I’d say this to you:

Anyone who needs to be told to take a little salt with everything one reads needs a lot more than a sodium boost.

Footnote: James Frey’s agent of four years, Kassie Evashevski of Brillstein-Grey Entertainment, dropped the author cold Wednesday. Her implication that the book’s resonance as “the most visceral and vivid description of drug addiction I had ever read” was somehow lessened by Frey’s admitting to solecism rings hollow (and more than a little naïve) to me, particularly from an agent in the publishing industry. The descriptions are no less vivid and visceral because they are dramatized.

I don’t see the conflict here (other than a literary agent and her agency not wanting to risk being on the wrong side of disappointment with one of the world’s most ubiquitous women).

The words moved Evashevski and, in turn, Doubleday. They moved Oprah and her genuflecting legions. And they moved me.

Mission accomplished, James Frey.

The back seat is quiet.

God In The Details

2005-12-18T07:45:00.000-08:00

This is a time of year when I think about my faith a lot. In fact, this time of year puts my faith to the test more than any other season. There will be times during this madhouse, commercial, soulless period when a part of me wonders where my faith has gone. But then I realize it is my faith that keeps me going through it all; it is my faith that transcends all this worldly bullshit.

Merriam-Webster defines “faith” as:

A firm belief in something for which there is no proof.

I have always firmly believed in God. It wasn’t as if I was even raised to be that way, which in a strange sense is a kind of proof for me. I didn’t have it crammed down my throat, I didn’t even have it dangled in front of me like a carrot or a brass ring. It was simply always at my core.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not saying I have devoutly followed any religious creed in my life (though I try to adhere to Christian principles as best I am able). I have not always chosen the best path…but I can say this with utter certainty: all along I knew what I was doing, and whether or not it was right or it was wrong.

In other words, I was always aware of my own free will, and how that freedom changed nothing about the inherent goodness or badness in my actions.

I believe there is in each of us, without a doubt, a moral compass. It generates the feeling that it is better to give than to receive.

Granted, not everyone feels it is better to give than to receive—i.e. there are those of us with a more selfish nature—but I would be willing to bet that short of the schizophrenic and pathologically criminal, each of us innately understands the difference between right and wrong. In other words, each of us understands that it is generally better to give than to receive.

That we don’t necessarily practice the ideal is simply a matter of human selfishness, and maybe in some instances even remnants of the animal instinct to survive. But I believe we still all know what is right and what is wrong, at least at our core.

Think about it. If we steal from someone else, we know it’s wrong. We may still do it—out of need, out of habit, out of sheer greed—but we damn sure don’t feel good about it. And it’s not because society (or our parents) taught us it was wrong. There are a great many things my parents taught me that I threw out the window when I turned 18 and garnered my own life. There are also many rules that society has deemed appropriate that I don’t necessarily agree with (and when I violate those laws, rules, etc. I don’t feel any sense of remorse or that what I am doing is wrong).

A less egregious example to illustrate:

The Express Lane at the supermarket. Let’s say it’s 15 items. How terrible do I feel if I use the line when I have 20 items, particularly when no one else is in line? I wouldn’t even think twice about it, particularly if the place is a zoo and I am in a hurry.

But what if there are several people behind me with 1-2 items? What if one of them happens to be an elderly woman with a cane and a single can of soup in her free hand, possibly her only sustenance for that day?

Okay, I am being melodramatic, but I would submit that most of us would feel much worse about “abusing” the Express Lane if it meant usurping someone more needy, someone following the rules.

In other words, I don’t believe it’s possible for society, or our parents, or anyone else, to instill in us a sense of right and wrong. A rule can be established, but only our moral compass can determine the true meaning of transgression. Oh, the bar can be raised with punishment enough to scare me away from doing something, but they can’t make me feel wrong about doing it.

What is it that stops me from laughing in the face of a man in a wheelchair who makes funny noises, who is drooling on himself, and whose body is contorted in a way that would look hilarious if it was my healthy friend sleeping soundly on the couch? What is it in my core that realizes cerebral palsy is no laughing matter and that this man can’t defend himself—what is it in my core that would make me sick to my stomach at this kind of behavior? There’s no rule against it. And under different circumstances, the same things might be funny. But here, they are not, and something deep inside me understands this—not because someone told me to feel that way, because it’s right to feel that way.

And no, I am not advocating pity here, just a core sense that there is something different about this situation that demands my understanding and respect.

Like it or not, there is an innate code of right and wrong inside us that governs our basal human behavior. No law can make us feel wrong about doing something—yes, shame and punishment are powerful tools, but fear of punishment and/or feeling shamed are not the same thing as feeling wrong.

It’s this core clockwork that fascinates me and whispers to me that there is something greater, some kind of Higher Power; something that instills an innate goodness in us, whether we choose to ignore it or not. Something else overseeing the Grand Design.

God?

Yes, I think so, whatever that means to me, you, or the fencepost. I wouldn’t presume to tell you what God is, or how you should view this Higher Power. But my faith tells me He is there.

I once asked a pastor—one I admired more than any I had known—how it was that Christianity could possibly be the only answer; how could other devout, good, moral people be wrong? He thought about it and said it wasn’t his place to judge others, that the story of Christianity just made more sense to him, and that is why he chose it.

He chose it.

I liked that answer very much. In fact, I’ll take it a step further: I think it’s possible a religion or a belief system chooses us. In effect, that God speaks to us in ways that we have the best opportunity to listen. Yes, we can let the words fall on deaf ears. We can choose our own paths. We can shake our heads in denial and we can decide to live in the moment; we can bathe ourselves in the physical, material, earthly pleasures of this place in time.

But that doesn’t change the fact that we know better.

The backseat is quiet.

The More We Grow

2005-12-03T07:22:00.000-08:00

With the holidays falling upon us like a pack of ravenous boars, tusks glinting in the sun—our emotional selves exposed and unprotected—I find myself thinking of moments long since passed: days of innocence, comfortable shelter against the merciless beasts of reality and of Christmas Present.

This picture is not the best in quality (this was, after all, 1978, era of the Kodak Instamatic in all it’s grainy glory). It is, however, one that warms my heart each time I drag it up from the dusty folders of digital scans mostly forgotten. This was my family, not too long before we moved to Big Wonderful Wyoming. For me, this frozen moment was deep in the belly of “growing up”, that time we recall with fondness: a time before the imperfect water of the decades—water with unseen organisms like failure, myocardial infarctions, autoimmune disease, divorce, age, and death—seeped between the cracks of family, froze solid, and burst apart what in younger years felt impenetrable and impervious to such common laws of physics.

I don’t dread the holidays. Even though I complain endlessly when the ladders and blow-up snowmen come out a week earlier each season (soon the official-unofficial start of the holiday season will be just after the Independence Day fireworks stop smoldering), I still secretly love it all. The lights, when not ghetto, are mostly beautiful. The perpetual bell-tinkling outside the grocery store, while at times like a tiny rock hammer to the brain, is still just a well-intentioned reminder to give more than ye receive. I do all my shopping online, so I could not care less about the crowds: the mean-spirited and selfish masses that swarm the shopping malls, willing to mortgage their humanity for a parking space. In all honesty, I do feel the spirit of Christmas, much as I might claim otherwise—it is and should be a time of reflection.

Okay, I am definitely a little jaded about the commercial and selfish aspects of the season, but my heart still warms at the sight of the Nativity scene and Barry Manilow singing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas still makes me cry like a pussy (to use an Eddie Murphy dichotomous reference that shamelessly balms the previous admission and boosts my otherwise suffering male ego).

Still, the fact remains that I miss my old family—I miss those Wyoming Christmases with the semi-naked but all-the-more-charming-because-of-it tree from the Bridger Wilderness and the wood stove cranking so much heat that who the hell needed Sweatin’ to the Oldies to work off that holiday fudge and pumpkin pie? I miss that family that used to care about each other, even if we were bickering and making fun of the clothing under the tree or wrestling until someone got hurt and went crying to Mom or Dad. These were the days of All American Family, the calm before the intensity of future storms.

And no, it's not crying over proverbial spilt milk. The facts of present are no more controllable than the trade winds or the elliptical movement of the planets around the sun. I don’t expect that things are any different for any of us, when you get right down to it. And maybe that is all the holiday was ever meant to be: a celebration of birth; a rejoicing for the good times (even if those are actually at any given point the better times). Perhaps it's okay that it is really a mostly empty promise we make each year. You know the one—it’s where we decide to make everything a little better every day of the year instead of just one.

This last picture was taken in Wyoming at one of the last Christmases we spent as a family. Even then, if you listened carefully, you could hear the water running between the solid granite, trickling maybe, but still working its way into the core of what once seemed perfect and indestructible.

It is still a good memory, being together, enjoying the cameraderie that only really ever comes—if you are incredibly fortunate—a few times over the course of a lifetime. I felt it so strongly then, and it allowed me to love and to laugh from the very center of my being. All clichés aside, there honestly is no better medicine. In so many ways I never felt stronger or more alive than when I was swaddled in the love and company of family.

My life now is wonderful in its own ways, different from then maybe, but in some inextricable sense the same. What is gone is the family of my youth, and this will each year be the season in which I remember it fondly.

Merry Christmas.

The back seat is quiet.

Big Truck, Little Dick

2005-10-15T11:25:00.000-07:00

I grew up in a small town in Wyoming, so I learned my skills amongst drivers who viewed the act not as a sport or a privilege but a necessity. When I was 24, I moved to Los Angeles and learned the intricacies and intimacies of big city driving. And though there were times I did miss the quieter, simpler main streets and byways, I never did mind driving in the metropolis too much.

Until I moved to Denver.

The first indication I had that Colorado drivers were the most idiosyncratic on the planet was at the first left hand turn lane I used. The driver in front of me was not paying attention to the green left arrow that had just appeared. I gave a respectful 2-3 second wait and lightly tapped a respectfully brief reminder beep on my horn. The driver (a middle-aged woman) perked up, took off, and promptly flipped me the bird.

I remember thinking at the time that she acted offended that I had somehow questioned her driving skills, when in reality all I did was offer the customary “excuse me” and nothing more. I later learned this is an unspoken affliction of many drivers in the Metro Denver area. A good number of drivers here take great offense at many innocuous acts, most of which are what I would consider qualities of the alert driver.

For instance: taking the empty slot at a red light (and no, I don’t mean the far right slot that inhibits drivers in the right lane behind from making a turn—this is a totally unused slot I am referencing). Apparently this is some kind of insult to the driver already parked at the red light, maybe an implication that they won’t be driving fast enough. Thing is, a person can drive as fast as they want from the stop at a red light, but when they do it just to show you they are offended and then slow down again, it’s borderline on neurotic.

And while we are on the subject, the theme of taking offense at many innocent and, frankly, normal driving habits (like passing a vehicle that is going slow in front of you) seems to be commonplace in Colorado. Literally, if you go to pass a slower moving vehicle (and again, no, I don’t mean roar up on them or make any derogatory gestures—I truly mean just use your blinker, safely change into the passing lane, and begin to pass) you will note a sudden increase in the speed of the other car. So for example, say you were going 50 mph and needing to pass said vehicle. When you have the opportunity to pass, you are forced to go 70 mph (and sometimes even this is not enough, forcing you to slow down and not pass).

If you do indeed pass the vehicle, you will immediately lose them in your rear view mirror as they drop off 20 mph or so.

I have been flipped off in this situation as well.

My favorite Colorado driver, however, is Little Dick. For the sake of attempting to keep this as PG-13 as possible, I’ll say that Little Dick may prefer to be called Richard, but he is Little, and a Dick, so therefore it is a must to refer to him in the more familiar and appropriate way (in Latin, by the way, he would be known by Littlus Dickus).

Little Dick, who seems to be present mostly in the general Denver Metro area, exhibits a majority of the following characteristics:

1. He drives a truck.

2. He looks ridiculously small for said truck, and requires a step-up device of some sort to even enter the driver side.

3. His rig is raised a minimum of three feet while leaving the actual ground clearance more or less unaffected.

4. His truck has some kind of lettering announcing to the world that it is bigger, tougher, and better (phrases such as Super-Charged, 4x4, Off-Road, and Magnum are popular).

5. The vehicle is normally diesel and rated for moving girders and for towing small farm equipment (but looks as though it’s never made it far from the detailing shop).

6. He invariably sports:

A. Pictures of cartoon characters peeing on the competition.

B. A decal that proclaims “Fear This”.

C. A “Superman” emblem.

D. A huge set of rubber testicles hanging from an oversized trailer hitch.

E. Some combination or all of the above.

In some instances, Little Dick is really a Needle Dick, a variation on the theme that sports a requisite goatee and backwards baseball cap (Needle Dick had his ass handed to him one too many times after gym class and feels the need to man-up every weekend, pound his tiny, hairless chest, and scream “I am man” from the top of a gnarly set of subconscious lungs).

The most stereotypical Needle Dick I ever had the pleasure of driving behind was towing a trailer containing another favorite of the Dick clan: a Harley Davidson motorcycle. In fact, this trailer was large enough that in addition to masking ND’s proclivity for blow-up girlfriends, could easily hold a quartet of motorcycles.

In any case, on this occasion, ND was apparently upset because I had pulled my much smaller Dodge pickup (sans Freudian adornments) in front of his behemoth truck and trailer tandem, thus breaking the cardinal rule of the Denver suburban jungle:

Never Threaten a Dick's Superiority (Or the Size of his Rig).

ND immediately began asserting his true nature by roaring his engine and feigning that he would ram me (I am guessing if we were pulled to the side of the road he would have tried to whip it out and pee on me, ala Calvin). Of course, once he pulled alongside and saw the evidence that personally I am not a Needle Dick at all, he shouted a typical obscenity and drove for home.

(For the record, I am guessing home includes inflatable companionship, a garage full of power tools, and a bathroom with a well-worn picture of David Hasselhoff and Kitt next to a fat jar of Zippy Lube).

Okay, okay, that's a little harsh. In all candor, I realize there are probably plenty of legitimate off-roaders, bikers, and even Knight Rider fans, who were not one roll of the 16-sided die away from becoming Dungeons and Dragons Master Champions and who are probably not Dicks at all, much less Little or Needle Dicks. Yes, maybe I am being a little generous with the Knight Rider acknowledgement, but you get the point.

Fact is, if you drive in Denver and do not fit the description above, you probably know exactly the type of numbskull I am talking about. If you do fit this description, then you need to take your checkbook, drive at least 100 miles in any direction, and rent a pair.

Yeah, yeah, dude, we get it:

See Dick run.

See Dick roar his big truck around town.

See Jane prefer a man who doesn’t need a four-wheel substitute for his package.

The back seat is quiet.

An Uneasy Resonance

2005-07-27T05:04:00.000-07:00

I wonder to myself why each day my thoughts are inevitably drawn to the vastitude of mortality, inescapable as nightfall and the loss of innocence.

It’s not that I am a dark thinker—I am filled with no doomsday prophecy nor overwhelming pessimism. Pragmatism, maybe, honed on the stone of reality. But not necessarily dark. I find humor in most everything life sends down the winding path. I am not into the gothic, though lately I have found myself more and more drawn to the literary and cinematic equivalents, I suppose—at least as far as the mainstream is concerned. It’s not that I detest a happy ending, but as I grow older I find the bitter root of truth more palatable than the honey-sweet bliss of ignorance .

We watched a potentially forgettable film a while back: The United States of Leland. The basic plot was intriguing, though the piece as a whole was plagued by a staccato tempo and somewhat stale script. Still, afterward, there was an uneasy resonance that lingered in my soul, a kind of eerie paramountcy. It may have been seeds planted willfully by writer and director Matthew Ryan Hoge—seeds that germinated subtly in my mind—or it may have been nothing more than an unintentional metamorphosis of the movie based on it’s ingredients. I believe art is neither inherently good or bad—many would use the term to describe something that has already reached a level of some critical weight or canon. I think mediocre art is capable of a kind of self-transformation, which is to say that the sum of the parts can be transcended through even the accidental combination of particular elements.

Without offering too much of a plot spoiler, let’s just say that a central theme is the underlying (and to most people invisible) sorrow that surrounds even the most apparently joyous moments; the encumbrance of an ability to see the mortal reality of present and, more importantly, future turns of circumstance.

The cloud’s black lining.

Leland accounts watching a youth baseball game and seeing beyond the cheering parents and energetic towheads to the one boy who sits at the end of the bench, unable to compensate for his lack of ability and popularity with unfunny jokes and tired theatrics.

In the whirlwind kiss of a young couple in love he sees the eventual betrayal and heartbreak of a roaring passion gone cold.

A dark, glass-is-less-than-half-full kind of movie on the surface, possibly, but also central is Leland’s incredible sadness at his own inability to effect change, to bring true happiness and contentment to these strangers (and, of course, himself and those important to him).

The crushing mass of overwhelming compassion.

I received an email a couple of weeks ago from my aunt Karen, informing us of my other aunt’s diagnosis with early stage breast cancer. In all, the news was very encouraging, the prognosis excellent. Indeed, with my aunt Joyce’s vivacious lust for life—with her ability to see what Leland couldn’t: the good in not only the good times, but even in the bad—my first thoughts were of the absoluteness of her ability to strut past this with the confidence and surety of a boxer who knows she has been matched with an opponent unworthy of her talented and richly experienced gloves.

Still, I was left with (as my Aunt Karen so eloquently put it in her email) an uneasy resonance. I had cancer just three years ago, and though I am moving further away from the sickness, and as much as I might want to return to the downy comfort of innocence, I can’t escape the knowledge that I am permanently moving toward my own mortality. And this truth leaves me bereft of words for someone who means very much to me and despite her verve could probably use (and should expect) something from one who has so far survived the beast.

So I sit, crushed by the sheer mass of overwhelming compassion, wordless. I want to write, I want to call, and yet I have done neither. Because the truth of the matter is, after you get past the incredible need to make someone else feel better, there is still that black nugget of fear that you aren’t better.

There, I said it:

I am afraid.

That, however, is no reason to withhold saying the things I want to say to my aunt Joyce—someone who is a living part of my heritage: a Branson; my mother’s sister.

Joyce, if you are reading, my lack of contact since you were diagnosed is nothing short of cowardice on my part. My fear has left me without enough words, terrified that there is nothing I can say to make you feel better, but worse, fearful that should I speak too loudly, the beast might hear me and come calling again.

So please forgive me if this blog seems too impersonal, for it is truly a shield of sorts, a lame attempt to reach out to someone I love and about whom I am thinking constantly while still hiding in the shadows at the side of the road. I am afraid of my own mortality, of leaving a wife and son without a companion and father. I feel as if just talking about it will somehow strike a stone, a stone that will throw a spark, a spark that will ignite the fire. I’ve seen too many loved ones pass at the hands of this disease, and having lived with it myself, I fear most that I will never be without this shameful cowardice.

What I do not fear, however, is for your future, Joyce. I have no doubt in my mind at all that you will weather this as I have seen you weather all the rough seas—with strength, humor, love, and most of all: success. I know you will do what you always do—make us all proud.

You are, after all, Max’s daughter.

20 Authors You Should Read (Instead of Stephen King): Part Deux

2005-06-19T08:58:00.000-07:00

I know what you are thinking (okay, maybe I don’t, but I am going to say so anyway): Sequels are normally about as entertaining as a high colonic (and with fewer pleasant aftereffects).

I agree. And there are no promises here, but I said that I would continue with my 20 Authors You Should Read (Instead of Stephen King) as filler when I was either too lazy or too busy to write anything else.

Since I have failed that charter miserably, I will say this to those of you who’ve read me before (you know who you are):

I hope you have long since realized:

That I understand that you are either family, friend, or some less obligated soul who happened across this blog and stopped for a moment, in all likelihood, accidentally, and could frankly not care less.
The phrase “Instead of Stephen King”, in addition to being my own private little well-placed uppercut to the solar plexus of the famous hack, is a metaphor in place of “any mainstream writer who would perhaps rather cash the absurdly humongous paycheck than actually write something original and GOOD.”
That these are writers who, talented as they are, may not wind up on the plate of many readers who stick to the bestseller list (readers who are, simply put, huge John Grisham and Dan Brown fans).
That I know my other posts could be (even politely) construed as “filler”.
That most days I am too lazy to write even backhanded backhands to SK. And…
If you happen to be Stephen King, I apologize not.

That said…

Please imagine an evolved, washed out ape of a private dick who’s, well, really an ape. Pique your curiosity? How about booze-swilling, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed babies and cliché gun-toting, lame-brained, mafia muscle in the form of a kangaroo in a dinner jacket? And as if this isn’t enough, how would you feel about a Government-issued drug called “make” that, in addition to being as common in the future as bottled water in 2005, is customizable at any corner pharmacy with personalized proportions of such additives as Forgettol, Regrettol, Believol and, the Government blend’s prime ingredient, Acceptol?

What if I told you I understand your trepidation, but set that apprehension aside and curl up with Jonathan Lethem’s Gun, With Occasional Music anyway because not only is it a page-turner with a great storyline, chock full of crisp, acerbic, original dialogue, but it is one of the most brilliant, well-written novels I’ve ever had the pleasure to pick up?

True, it’s a thinly-veiled homage to the late Sci Fi novelist Phillip K. Dick, but this is no parroted, mimeograph likeness. Nor is Lethem’s one of pick-pocketed style—whether you end up loathing Gun’s twisted, dystopian future, or end up falling in love with it for the same reason, there is one certainty: you won’t be able to say (with straight face anyway) that Jonathan Lethem isn’t an original.

For this reason alone I recommend him as an author you should be reading instead of Stephen King.

Lethem’s writing is an entrancing hybrid of brilliant genre and sleek noir much in the way Angelina Jolie is an entrancing hybrid of Oscar-winning father and beautiful (if not particularly famous) lesser actress: you can love Angelina in movies or you can hate Angelina in the movies, but you can hardly wrench your eyes away when she’s center scene. Like Lethem’s writing, she is a siren that commands your attention.

Fortunately, Lethem’s style is more than eye candy. His prose is gloriously pithy, devilishly original, and funny in a way that grabs you by the privates and says laugh, or the scrotum gets it.

Case in point, a comment regarding a single headlight following the gumshoe Conrad Metcalf in Gun:

…I was beginning to feel the proverbial breath on my neck, but I tried not to let it spook me into making a wrong move. A tail is like a pimple. It comes to a head in its own time. You can rush it, but it usually makes a mess if you do.

Nice.

I also found this tidbit in an Amazon.com book review of Motherless Brooklyn, winner of the 1999 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction:

“Pop quiz. Please complete the following sentence: "There are days when I get up in the morning and stagger into the bathroom and begin running water and then I look up and I don't even recognize my own ___." If you answered face, then your name is obviously not Jonathan Lethem. Instead of taking the easy out, the genre-busting novelist concludes this by-the-numbers string of words with toothbrush in the mirror.”

I have read two other Lethem books to date:

As She Climbed Across the Table, an engrossing tale of, among other well-written and entertaining characters, an awestruck physicist and her eventually amorous obsession with her mentor’s fickle singularity.

Also, The Disappointment Artist, a collection of Lethem essays on childhood and adult subjects ranging from a lifetime defending John Ford’s The Searchers to the title essay, inspired by letters from his Aunt Billie regarding her ruthless tutelage at the hands of the underground hero-author, Edward Dahlberg. Lethem also writes of his own obsession with comic books, Star Wars (the original, 21 viewings), his parents’ bohemian lifestyle, his mother’s death when he was only a teenager, and a lifetime grapple with his father’s “realist” art (I learned to think by watching my father paint, he begins).

(I am currently reading Men and Cartoons, a collection of short stories. Motherless Brooklyn is on deck.)

Yes, there is a lot of dreck out there—did I mention John Grisham and Dan Brown? You may not end up having the affinity I do for Lethem and his canon, but suffice to say that I believe him well worth the risk.

Do yourself a favor, pick up a copy of Gun, With Occasional Music, but do it on a Friday when you have the weekend free. You’ll more than likely need a couple days with this gem glued to your fingers.

The back seat is quiet.

Halloween on Christmas

2005-05-06T03:40:00.000-07:00

My son, Garret, went to Albuquerque with his mother recently to visit some people who are still their friends, if not mine. Truth is, as many of us know, this is one of the first casualties of a bitter divorce: mutual friendships.

Garret is 14 years old and quite the thoughtful, respectful, caring young man. In fact, I am very proud of the way he looks at the world already, and I am pleased to see shades of the person he will one day fully become. He’s weathered the divorce, and though it has been (and continues to be) difficult for him, it is admirable the way he carries himself in the face of adversity.

Well, on the way home from school yesterday he was telling me about having a conversation with the kids of this New Mexico brood, talking about things kids are want to discuss: video games, television, sports, and music. On the subject of the latter, the 9 year-old asked Garret what kind of music he liked. My son, whose music taste is varied and broad—one of his favorite songs is an old Doors classic I introduced him to a couple years back—thought about it for a moment and answered:

“I don’t know, I guess rock mostly.”

“Like who?”

“Blink 182,” Garret said.

The young boy’s eyes widened and he asked, incredulous:

“Blink 182? I thought you were a Christian!”

When my son told me the story, we actually had a good laugh. It wasn’t an atheistic overture—both of us believe in God. We laughed for the simplest of reasons: it was funny. The face my son made when recounting the tale was all it took.

(And the irony is, he mentioned several popular Christian bands he likes to these boys, none of which they’d heard of.)

Yeah, I guess it's true. We somehow overlooked the 11th Commandment:

Thou shall not listen to Blink.

On the way to work the next day I got to thinking about the strangeness of religion I’ve seen over the years, from uninformed fanaticism to outright hypocrisy, and I realized that there is nothing inherently wrong with religion, only at many times the zealots who practice it.

There is currently an investigation at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs regarding religious harassment. Turns out the Evangelical Christians are making life miserable for not just the Jews, or the Zen Buddhists, or the Muslims but—oh, Martha, say it ain’t so—yes, other Christians. Turns out less orthodox Christians are proselytized by those of evangelical faith.

What exactly is it about zealots and small-minded people that makes them think God has somehow tasked them to not only find the one and only answer (as if He would have only one) but for them to also make absolutely certain that they persecute promptly any who do not fall in line with their segregated thought? Even the Pope wrote a formal apology for the Inquisition and the Crusades.

And Mahatma Gandhi said:

Please do not flatter yourselves with the belief that a mere recital of that celebrated verse in St. John makes a man Christian. If I have read the Bible correctly, I know many men who have never known the name of Jesus Christ, men who have even rejected the official interpretations of Christianity, but would nevertheless, if Jesus came in our midst today in the flesh, be probably owned by him more than many of us. My position is that it does not matter what faith you practice, as long as the soul longs for truth.

I’ve spent the majority of my life believing in God. I also believe Jesus Christ was His son, sent to Earth to bridge the chasm between the Almighty and this lowly human race. I don’t believe it because my parents crammed it down my throat. They didn’t. In fact, they didn’t take me to church, nor did they have a particular faith.

I joined the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in college, and asked more questions than I answered. I have read much of the Bible, though I cannot quote scripture. I have read a good number of books on the marriage of science and the creation of the Universe. One of my favorite authors is C.S. Lewis. I teach my son to love his neighbor as himself, to always think of the other person, and to be loving and forgiving above all else.

And yet I am flawed. Flawed but hopefully not a hypocrite.

My ex-friend John in Albuquerque, who now teaches his children that the Simpsons are evil and that teenagers that listen to Blink 182 aren’t real Christians, once told us the story of how he got something for nothing. Or at least for a song:

And he wasn’t 14 either. He was a young adult, and had saved $1500 to buy some top-of-the-line Bose speakers. When he went to the store with the cash, the speakers were $1500 all right, but there was a little something he’d not counted on: sales tax. Somehow John talked the salesman into letting him write a check for the sales tax—something like $75—and was then to pay the balance in cash. Well he wrote the check and the guy cashed out the sale, with a receipt that showed he’d paid in full. The guy even helped him load the speakers, and the whole time John knew that the young salesman had forgotten the balance and he still had the wad of cash in his pocket.

Less than an hour after he got home, the guy called him and said:

“Hey, you aren’t going to believe this but I forgot to get the cash from you after you paid the sales tax with that check.”

John said:

“I don’t know what you are talking about, I have a receipt that shows paid in full.”

Later, this young guy came to John’s house, knocked on his door. He begged John to reconsider, said they both knew what had happened, that he had screwed up and not collected the money. He said he was going to lose his job, that he had a family to support.

John looked him straight in the eye and repeated:

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

The guy left and John never saw him again. And the thing is, when John told us this story years later, he still told it with pride. I asked him how he could do that to the guy, and his answer to me, even then, was:

“What? I had the receipt. What did he expect me to do?”

Nowadays John grows his hair long so that he can play Jesus in the yearly church production at Easter, raises his arms as a prophet and savior over his flock. He keeps his hair that way throughout the year, apparently not only for the pretending but also for a little bit of vanity too.

And he looks down on 14 year-old kids who listen to particular bands or who are prone to quoting the best lines from The Breakfast Club. Regardless of the character of said kids.

There is a saying that many Christians quote. They wear wristbands, put bumper stickers on their cars: WWJD?

What Would Jesus Do?

It’s not a bad question, whether you believe Jesus Christ rose from the dead or not. It’s meant to make you think about your actions, put them alongside a yardstick to see how they measure up.

Let’s face it, most of our actions would be found wanting against such standards. But I can honestly say that my core character hasn’t changed all that much over the years, and I would have given the $1500 back before I left the store.

And so would my son.

Swear that I can go on forever again
Please let me know that my one bad day will end
I will go down as your lover, your friend
Give me your lips and with one kiss we begin

—Blink 182, I’m Lost Without You

The backseat is quiet.

April In Her Heart

2005-04-14T13:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my mother leaving this world behind. I have heard the term “easy death”, a warrior term that refers to a person dying quickly and without too much suffering. This was not one of those.

My aunt Joyce, a gifted writer and every bit my mom’s sister, sent a note today because the coming of Spring had caused her to reflect on the good memories of beloved family passed.

She writes beautifully about this April in Iowa:

The Willows are bright green, the daffodils blooming, the red bud about to bloom, the roses sending out shoots, the river flowing quietly.

Her words made me realize that too often I think of the things that are wrong with the world. Even now, as I write these words, the cynic deep in my soul cries for his freedom to condemn and complain.

But my mother, Donna, so often saw the small pleasures in this life:

A cup of coffee and a smoke on the porch.

The stray cat who would come by for free food but only from her small, bird-like hands.

The way Spring nudges the sun back to it’s proper position as arbiter of the long, flush days of Summer.

And oh, how she disdained the short, gray Days of Winter…

Of course, in Colorado the Days of Winter are not unlike a pack of overweight dogs with lolling tongues and more woof than snap. I think that’s part of what kept her going during the tough months, when the arthritis crept up from the shadows and suggested that maybe life wasn’t all that worth living. She could count on the weak spine of Colorado Winter and the comforting promise of Spring in the mountains.

Here in Colorado days are beginning to lengthen and in-between the occasional late season storm, the skies are blossoming into those cobalt blue masterpieces my mother so adored.

I was just the other day telling my teenage son, who maybe misses her most of all, about his grandma in her thirties: a tennis addict who had yet to face the merciless grip of RA; a beautiful tanned thing with jet-black hair the color of the Ford Mustang they’d sold maybe a decade and a half earlier. I told how she always wanted me to play—me a lithe, in-shape version of the now fat, elder self: a young man my own son now has a hard time imagining.

I would win the matches that first summer, and most of the games, though I was impressed by her verve and skill.

Thing is, I was the athlete. At least I was then. But at the end of our Summer of Tennis it was off to school for me, and while I was away, she’d practice against anyone who would play her, even the best players in the region.

When I returned next Spring, it showed. We played in shorts, even though the Wyoming snow still wandered up to courtside for a seat and the cold in the air still had teeth. She worked me hard, never letting up: effortless in her swing, graceful in her power.

She bested me in as many matches as I bested her. The games were a dog-fight, many going down to deuce or double-deuce before a decision. In the end, the day was a draw, yet I will never forget the smile on her face, the look of complete contentment, her spirit soaring high above her on the mighty wings of something set out for and achieved.

It is in that spirit that I write today: the indomitable spirit of my wonderful mother, whom I miss more than anyone can ever know. She brightened my every day while she was here, and her memory keeps me going even still.

Would that we could all have souls as clear and unencumbered as hers.

There is no doubt in me that I will see her one day. My dream is of that first serve again, love-love.

I miss you, Mom.

The back seat is quiet.

Songs of the Doomed

2005-02-27T09:25:00.000-08:00

I turn to simplicity; I turn again to purity.
- Genghis Kahn, 1221

Hunter S. Thompson wrote much of his life about the death of the American dream. He wrote the truth, or at least how he saw it.

Never apologize, never explain.

Not only was Thompson unafraid to speak the truth, his work oozed it. And not some bastardized, kowtow, I-give-a-fuck-about-what-you-think sellout version. You might not have agreed with his politics, you might not have condoned his wholesale drug and alcohol abuse, and you might have thought the guy was, well, a little weird. But here’s the crux:

HST didn’t care. He didn’t write to amuse you and he didn’t write to appease you. His was never the stuff of cookie-cutters; Thompson was the antithesis of the megalomaniacal, fat-cat executives, dealing their regurgitated crap like ruthless, greed-gorged pushers to the addicted masses.

He wrote what he believed, no matter who it might piss off, and though his work could be at once revolting and strangely satisfying, his insight bordered on genius.

I’ve written before about the sloven carpetbaggery of self-proclaimed demagogue Michael Moore, and you may have mistakenly thought this was because of a deep (or even shallow) rooted disdain for his views or his politics. Not so. As the facts would have it, I don’t necessarily agree with him, but that is not what sickens me about his worn-out rhetoric. What sickens me is the inherent, shameful dishonesty.

In reality what I seek, what I long for in this lifetime, is the truth. I’ve always believed if we could somehow harness the truth, we could find the way, whatever that way is.

So when I read someone who is unafraid to speak the truth, no matter the medium, no matter the context, I am transfixed. This is precisely why Hunter S. Thompson’s words have always spoken to me. I see through the witty, stoic, psychedelic humor to something deeper and richer and truer.

The truth, whether I have liked it or not.

And not everyone likes it. In many circles HST will continue to be viewed as a bullshit relic, a man from a lost time who could not relinquish his grasp on the 60’s or the 70’s. A political hippie who never grew up. A blown-out addict, a delusional hack.

Thing is, he may have been some of those things, a few even by his own admission. But he was also a man unafraid to seek the truth, and though he may or may not have been right, he was honest, and it is therein that the truth takes seed.

Hunter S. Thompson was a man who saw Richard Nixon as the destructor of the American dream, delusional in a belief that character equaled destiny, but still disliked Gary Trudeau—maybe the most successful Nixon lampooner of all time—so much so that he claimed he would set fire to him if they ever met (this over a Doonesbury character named “Uncle Duke”, based loosely on the Gonzo journalist).

Thompson saw the truth as soon as it raised its ugly head. In a section of Songs of the Doomed entitled "Community of Whores", Thompson wrote of the prostitution of his beloved town:

“Aspen is a big-time tourist town, and only two kinds of people live here—the Users and the Used—and the gap between them gets wider every day…now a slavish service community of pimps and middlemen where the only real question in politics is ‘How much money do you have?’”

* * *

In the end is it any surprise that Hunter S. Thompson took his own life? Many will say it was the chronic pain (there was a recent broken leg and hip surgery). There may be some truth in that. I suffered through two months of chemo and radiation treatments that made me think I wanted to die, and I was only 37.

But I think there is more to the truth. The man lived a long life, particularly by his own standards, and yet still I don’t think he ever found the answers he was looking for. Or maybe he found the answers, but not those he was hoping for. Maybe this lifetime of digging at the scabs of society—five decades spent willingly rooting through the smegma of human existence for the truth—was enough to make him want to exit this faux stage. You may not agree with his choice, but you can’t say the man ever backed down from what he saw as reality.

He once quoted, possibly prophetically, a forgotten poet:

“All my life my heart has sought a thing I cannot name.”

The reports are Thompson did not leave a note. I disagree. He left a lifetime of them: lyrics of the soul, songs of the doomed.

Hunter Stockton Thompson, 1937 - 2005

The backseat is quiet.

What I've Learned About Christmas

2004-12-19T07:26:00.000-08:00

My parent’s Christmas tree was a frail, beautiful thing, cut directly from God’s splendor with a small saw and large heart. Many times only to be found by the diligent on cross-country skis, the perfect tree later in life inevitably turned out to be much closer to the road. It was an act of homage to borrow an elemental from heaven’s backyard and dress it in memorial to the greatest birth the world has ever known.

When I think back on the Christmas of my childhood, it is a mother’s love that permeates the good memories. No holiday music was cheesy to her, no Christmas candy too decadent. To return later in life was a privilege to be coveted. Going home for the holidays was to be handed the consummate hall pass: a week or two away from the cadre of adulthood – permission to be stupid and corny and without care, like the innocent, big-toothed child we all once were.

Back in early adulthood, before our father died, before our mother left their mountain home forever – back before the effrontery of reality mercilessly beat the hope from us – it was Christmas that provided the one true time machine, better than anything H.G. Wells could have dreamt up. Back then a trip home for the holidays somehow transported us to a time and a place when all that mattered was the moment: fresh, odiferous, cinnamon bread in the oven and the unspoken assurance that the future held infinite promise.

I believe with all my heart that mothers are the reflection of the true meaning of the holiday: the celebration of whatever right is left in the world; the celebration of the selfless, pragmatic, caretaker who puts His arms around us and make us feel warm and safe from the cold. Mothers represent the truth in all of us, the inarguable fact that each of us ought to be a better person, if for no other reason than because she was.

My mother was a saint of sorts, as most mothers are, and though she loved it for many years, the wiser she grew the more she disliked Christmas, albeit for all the right reasons.

This list is a memorial to her, a mother of three who passed away on April 13th this year in the 60th year of her life. I think she would have liked this list, because she was more than a mother; she was a confidant and a friend – a woman with a fine sense of humor and a supply of love as never-ending as night in a star-filled Wyoming sky.

Christmas is Miracle on 34th Street and It’s a Wonderful Life, not Jingle All the Way or Christmas with the Kranks.

Christmas is about the spirit of giving, not the spectacle of receiving.
A Christmas without a little humor isn’t Christmas at all.

Gaining weight at Christmas is a privilege and honors the cook.

A reading of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas on Christmas Eve should be as commonplace as a recitation of The Lord’s Prayer in a football locker room.

If Jesus returned to earth tomorrow, you would not find Him at the local mall, regardless of the incredible last-minute holiday sale.

Christmas lights are beautiful, but not when they go up the day before Thanksgiving.

There is always someone who is having a worse Christmas than you. Lighten up.

Christmas is the 2nd best reason to come home for the holidays to see your family. The best is because you love them.

Sending correspondence to someone once a year in the form of a Christmas card is not rude. It reminds them that as busy as you might get, as distant as the miles may be, you will never forget.

Food never tastes better than when it’s shared across the table from someone you have missed.

Cutting wood for Dad’s fire is something you will miss long after Christmas has passed and the muscles have lost their soreness.

Christmas in the stillness of the mountains is like no other Christmas in the world. If Jesus returned tomorrow, you just might find Him there.

Our mother will be missed, because though Christmas had become less and less her favorite holiday, it was always about family to her, and there will be a place setting too large to ever fill at our table this, and every year to come. To me she will always be remembered as she passed from this world:

A frail, beautiful thing, cut directly from God’s splendor.

Oscar Maher Wiener

2004-10-02T07:48:00.000-07:00

God I can’t stand Bill Maher. It’s not that I am offended by contrary opinion. In point of fact, I am not sure Maher and I really disagree that much if you boil down his arrogant, self-serving, pate and examine the true motivations and opinions buried deep within.

(Trust me, that’s a lot of boiling just to find something Real).

My problem is with a pellucid talk show host who stacks an audience (and panel) with ringers then smugly plays for an hour off the predictable nods, guffaws, and outright cheers of support as if the drivel he himself espouses is of obvious import and that the wit is somehow his own and not the product of a staff of writers.

Believe it or not, I truly enjoy debate. Good debate. Honest debate between – and this is critical – intelligent opponents, folks on the opposite side of a table who want to discuss the issues truthfully and respectfully. The point of good debate should be, after all, enlightenment.

Maher’s idea of a successful show is one in which he fires off 30-40 off-the-cuff, completely ridiculous and totally unfunny remarks, spouts falderal from both sides of his mouth, then basks in the applause of his home-grown moronic followers as Caligula must have lorded over his private orgies.

Last night was Maher’s post-debate show (of course). I nearly wept when I saw the identity of the keynote guest (read: ultra-“liberal” chowderhead directly to Maher’s right hand, much as young Herod must have sat, patiently waiting for his chance to wield the sword of indecency):

George Carlin.

The reason for my near-tears is threefold:

1. Carlin epitomizes the worst American: a jaded, imbecilic, angry, uninformed, and pathologically generalizing soul who hides his hatred of God, wrapped in kind of self-proclaimed “informed atheism” and anti-government rhetoric that of course gives him the right to act any way he wishes, with absolutely no accountability: damn the morality, damn society, damn them all.

2. He is, or at least was, one of the funniest men I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. Truly, when I was maybe 10 or 11, my parents had his first LP, and I played “Eleven O’Clock News” so many times it wore a groove in the damn record, and laughed so hard it hurt. He was the comedian who not only broke, but burst my cherry, and now he is an acerbic, dried-out, raisin who is just waiting to die to prove to everyone that there is nothing beyond this shit heap world but dirt and worms. It’s a tragedy. He’s not even funny any more.

3. General principle: Maher’s keynote guest, like his show, is meant to be representative of the highest order of liberal Democrat, but invariably these mealy pseudo-intellects represent the passionate Democrats I know about as well as Bill O’Reilly represents real Republicans. I have several Democrat – yes, liberal – relatives who are as passionate about politics as any people I have ever known, and they are also the salt of the earth – in my estimation, diametrically opposite of people like Bill Maher and his cronies.

Segue back to Maher and his compatriot guests, Moore and Carlin. These guys have never been in the military, have never participated in a sport (excepting the times they must have been picked last in gym class or had sand kicked in their faces at beach volleyball events), yet have obviously led troubled lives where they decided that being bitter and narcissistic was the answer, and everything in life must be fodder for ridicule, particularly areas where they’ve been excluded and/or unable to hack it.

Don’t kid yourself. Maher isn’t a liberal. He stands for nothing. He doesn’t represent any contingent other than the pathetic Untermensch:

You know them. When they don’t have a talk show and the backing of another major network or a lucrative book contract, they sit alone in the coffee shop or street corner or bus seat, talking to themselves because no one else will listen to their angry, self-absorbed, rabble.

Hollow antisocial pricks that would repulse even Nietzsche.

They are the simpletons who couldn’t find a place in society where they weren’t being ridiculed for one thing or another, so it is their lot to point the finger at everyone and everything that doesn’t suit them. There is nothing as noble as a true cause for these pumpkin-heads. Worse, they are vampires, living in the shadows, cowardly suckling off the black lifeblood of hypocrisy.

Take the stand against wealth and privilege:

Do you really believe “celebrities” like Maher and Moore and Carlin shake their heads magnanimously with palm held forth when the royalty checks are presented to them, bashfully admonishing: “Oh no, I couldn’t possibly…I plan to remain chaste in the matters of financial success. I will eke out my meager existence in the spirit of monetary celibacy.”

You can bet your last dollar that Maher get hives the night before the ratings are announced. These blowhards pontificate about the apparent evils of “oil money” and “privilege”. Fine. But do they make a stand? Do they produce their own financial statements? No. They buy the next summer home, chuckling and chortling all the way to the bank to make the withdrawal.

When I see the masses bow down to these cretins of self-serving rhetoric and hypocrisy, one word glows in soft electric pink, like the unwelcome sign of an adult bookstore encroaching on the better neighborhoods in the depths of my mind, silent harbinger of our race’s eventual demise:

Suckers.

The back seat is quiet.

20 Authors You Should Read (Instead of Stephen King): Part I

2004-09-10T08:19:00.000-07:00

This will be an occasional filler post (continuing, at least, until I reach the number of 20). You should know three things about this list:

1. These are fiction authors I highly recommend.

2. The reasoning behind creating such a list is, at least in part, vindictive (see below).

3. These authors really are better than Stephen King.

Now for the bitter part.

I grew up a child (and young man) reading Stephen King. As an aspiring writer, you could say he was my hero (he was). No, I wasn’t raised on the classics, which is unfortunate. I find books like The Iliad and The Odyssey tough reads (which is why I am not a better writer, plain and simple).

Even later in life, as an always-writing, forever-cutting-my-teeth, college student, I idolized King. Eventually I joined the day-job workforce, as most aspiring artists do – which is in part what keeps us aspiring, I suppose. I spent the better part of 15 years providing for my family in a job about as distant from writing for a living as the sun is from the moon.

So flash forward to me at 36, living here in Denver. Having just read On Writing, King’s own definitive book which details his personal trek as an aspiring writer, I was presented with a Golden Opportunity: I read in a local paper that The Rock Bottom Remainders, a band consisting mostly of famous writers (of which, at the time, King was a member), was coming to the Gothic Theater. Further, for a paltry sum of $300 (“paltry” being used with the most dripping sarcasm I could find lying around at the time this was written) a person could attend a “meet and greet” before the show, throwing back hors d’oeuvres and mingling with the writers.

Wow.

Not only did I pay the exorbitant price, I bought two VIP tickets – one for me and one for my then-wife (after all, who was going to snap the picture of me and my newfound compatriot)?

I won’t keep you in suspense. King was a complete ingrate. He was as disingenuous as they come, couldn’t have wanted to be there less and was making sure everyone knew it. Turns out when it comes to his fans, he doesn’t believe in idolatry (don’t get me started on celebrities who make millions off their fan base and then decide they don’t like their fan base).

He was so unapproachable I had to force myself on him to get a picture (not something I am proud of, nor something I would normally even do). I was in a state of shock. I had wanted so much to talk trade with him, maybe garner a small table scrap of hope from one who has fought for sustenance in the rough and tumble world of literary impossibilities and come out sated on the other side. In other words, I really just wanted to have a conversation with the man (not sure whether that was the meet or the greet but for $600 I was sure it fell in there somewhere between).

I brought only one book for him to sign (others brought stacks of all his classics: Carrie, Cujo, Christine, It, The Stand). I brought On Writing. I was the only one there who did. But do you think Stephen King, through even something as trivial as a twinkle in the eye, recognized that here before him, Dear Reader, was a fellow hopeful, a man who was still living in the ethereal dream of one day becoming a writer like himself? Do you think for even one nanosecond of time he acknowledged the fact that some had paid money they couldn’t afford to actually meet the filthy rich author?

Don’t hold your breath. King placed his scrawl on my book with so much disdain he might just as easily have been signing his own death warrant.

The night, however, was not a total bust. I met sports columnist and Tuesdays with Morrie author Mitch Albom, as well as humorist Dave Barry. Albom and his wife were gracious and talkative, posing for pictures and asking about Denver, while Stephen King conveniently disappeared after devouring a plate of grub.

Dave Barry, in addition to being just as gracious as Albom (and, later, stealing the show), actually wrote me back from his paper in Miami after I sent a note thanking him for the opportunity.

My apologies for the long, drawn out explanation of why I have bitterly included King in my design of this continued post. I promise future posts on this subject will focus exclusively on the recommended authors.

Now, since I have wasted most of my time here, and since I am not listing these authors in any particular order, let me just recommend one author this go around – one of my favorite contemporary reads:

Thom Jones.

Jones has written several collections of short stories (The Pugilist at Rest, Cold Snap, and Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine).

Once you get past the heavy ex-fighter thread that ties many of these tapestries together, you will find an author who grabs you by the shorts hairs, drags you around the room like a rag doll, tosses you in an exhausted, disheveled heap, and apologizes for nothing. Jones is, in my opinion, one of the most talented writers of this generation.

And finally, in the spirit of offering up credit where credit is long overdue, let me thank my good friend MF, who in light of my sheltered existence in the dark, chewing on the rind of Stephen King all those years, offered me up a flashlight and the fruit of his “reading list” (and oh what a juicy, delectable fruit it has been to sink these hungry teeth into). I owe much of my current list of contenders to him.

Boodles and Ice to you, MF.

And to Stephen King?

A highball of turned milk, straight up. Choice beverage of the sophistical hack.

The back seat is quiet.

Hollywood Executives: Baby Geniuses

2004-09-09T01:37:00.001-07:00

Last year I watched HBO’s (now Bravo's) Project Greenlight for the first time. A young writer named Erica Beeney won the screenplay competition with a poignant, well-written script titled The Battle of Shaker Heights. I read the screenplay online, and was extremely excited to see this tight, witty, thoughtful piece of work brought to the silver screen, particularly since the winning co-directors, Efram Potelle and Kyle Rankin, created one of the most original short-short bits I have ever seen.

Seemed like this was a surefire formula for success.

Enter stage left, the cliché fat-cat Hollywood studio, Miramax. Namely, Harvey and Bob Weinstein (who founded the company, named after their mother Miriam and father Max). Now let me say for the record that the Weinstein brothers have produced some classic films, so this is not an exclusive rant against Miramax, per se.

The Miramax short list?

Sex, Lies, and Videotape
Pulp Fiction
Good Will Hunting
and yes, even The English Patient

(I tend to find myself in the same camp as Elaine in the Seinfeld episode of the same name, but I’ll concede it was a good choice in filmmaking nonetheless)

Still, the fact that Miramax has released some excellent film only serves to prove a point: it’s just a matter of time before tinsel-laden Hollywood executives sell-out to the lowest common denominator and bury the innovative, independent, and far more entertaining projects in favor of pure unadulterated schlock.

Worse yet, they take a wonderful script like The Battle of Shaker Heights, spray it down with a cheesy formulaic hose until it hardly resembles a shell of its former self, and then bury it unceremoniously in a limited release handful of theaters before sending it straight to DVD.

Hollywood is raising the prices, all the while lowering the bar. Take the following examples (statistics garnered from the highly recommended website, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/, as of September 8, 2004):

The Tops (based on reviews):

Film: Festival Express
Studio: ThinkFilm
# Theaters: 43
% Critics Recommended: 98% (56 reviews)

Film: Maria Full of Grace
Studio: Fine Line Features
# Theaters: 119
% Critics Recommended: 97% (99 reviews)

Film: Before Sunset
Studio: Warner Independent
# Theaters: 197
% Critics Recommended: 95% (132 reviews)

The Schlock (based on reviews – and a good bit of common sense):

Film: Without A Paddle
Studio: Paramount Pictures
# Theaters: 2756
% Critics Recommended: 14% (105 reviews)

Film: The Cookout
Studio: Lions Gate Films
# Theaters: 1303
% Critics Recommended: 5% (21 reviews)

Film: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2
Studio: Sony Pictures
# Theaters: 1276
% Critics Recommended: 0% (31 reviews)

Now I understand the fact that the first three films are being distributed by small, independent companies, but this is part of the point: the big studios won’t make – nor distribute – these films.

Think about this for a moment:

Maria Full of Grace, a film lauded by critics – recommended by 96 of 99 surveyed – is distributed in 119 theaters nationwide.

Without A Paddle, which is recommended by an anemic 15 of 105 critics, is distributed in 2756 theaters nationwide (hell, it’s in 20 theaters just here in Denver)!

What is wrong with this picture?

No coup de theatre here.

What’s worse? Here’s the current gross for this Seth Green masterpiece, in only it’s third week of release:

$39.9 million dollars.

That’s the crux, folks. In the end, you just can’t blame the fat cats in Hollywood. We’re ponying up the cash, so why would they ever consider cutting off the drivel supply chain?

Sadly, once a person realizes the sludge that is being produced by mainstream Hollywood and decides they’d rather spend their hard-earned scratch on the quality films, they can’t. Unless you live in L.A. or New York City, chances are the film’s not playing in your neighborhood. Ever.

And none of this will stop until John Q. Public quits lining up for this river of crap like a herd of 5 year-olds clambering for more cheap plastic throw-away Happy Meal toys. It’s just another example of people milling through life like a bunch of mindless cattle: the lowest common denominator wins and the fat cats get fatter.

A call to arms: make a stand, people. Get some bang for your buck – tell the Weinsteins of the world we demand better.

Hit them where it hurts: in that overstuffed Costanzian wallet.

The back seat is quiet.

Crockumentary: Less Is Moore

2004-08-28T08:50:00.000-07:00

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences darling Michael Moore won the 2002 Documentary Feature Oscar for his film Bowling for Columbine and is projected as a runaway to win again this year for Fahrenheit 911.

Merriam-Webster online defines documentary as:

2: of, relating to, or employing documentation in literature or art; broadly: FACTUAL, OBJECTIVE. Ex: a documentary film of the war.

Hmmm….

Factual. Objective. Employing documentation.

Not even close.

The irony here is that Moore may be ineligible for the Academy Award this year, not because his film thumbs its nose at what should be the spirit of the category (it does), but because he is contemplating airing the film on PBS the night of November 1st (seems while the Academy is pretty lax on just how much fact and objectiveness go into the documentaries they laud, they are pretty stringent on whether a film has been seen for free or whether it’s viewers had to shell out their hard-earned scratch).

Now the more I’ve read about this charlatan, the more I’ve seen documentation that his primary answer to his critics is “conspiracy”, and to suggest that – simply put – it’s just the Right Wing (or one of their numerous paid cohorts) who are out to get him.

Funny thing is, I don’t consider myself Republican or Democrat, and it’s not because I waffle or can’t decide. I don’t believe in extremes. I don’t believe any one party could possibly represent everything that is righteous because by definition if everyone did what was right, both party’s platforms would be identical.

So what you are invariably left with is a choice between the greater of two talking heads. Which means, more than ever, you need to be able to figure out who really means what they are saying. Sure, you can listen to what each candidate proclaims and pick based on that vitriol, but which one really means what he says? You can’t listen to the ads:

One says to-may-toe, one says to-mah-toe.

Surely someone out there is honest and forthright, objective and principled. After all, it’s what I teach my son: integrity above all else.

Well I wanted to find a sage, someone for whom honesty was a bedrock principle. I was searching for that elusive beast, the ephemeral wraith of the twenty-first century: the truth. Isn’t that what most sane people yearn for these days? Aren’t we tired of these carnival barkers masquerading as journalists? Do we really need these jaded pundits – practitioners of propaganda – to tell us where the bear shits in the buckwheat? In a time when hypocrisy and spin seem to reign supreme, I crave the raw truth.

Which is why I laid down the greenbacks to see my first Michael Moore film: Fahrenheit 911.

Never having seen any of Moore’s films, nor read any of his books, I gleaned enough of his rhetoric from the background noise to know he was a purported champion of the little man, and I thought well, maybe this guy has something to say. Maybe there is a message in there somewhere that I need to hear.

Turns out, I was right and wrong in the same moment. This guy definitely has something to say, he just doesn’t support anything he says with a little something we in the real world like to call the facts.

And there is most definitely a message in his movie, and that message is as subjective as it is crystal clear :

Michael Moore loathes George W. Bush and will do anything, say anything, distort any reality, and step on any number of toes it takes to dismantle the President’s reputation, with the sole purpose of swinging an election.

Which is a real bummer, because I am hardly looking to defend George W. I was truly hoping for some objective substance from this film. Some answers to the questions gnawing at my basement wiring.

See, I voted for Bush, choosing what I felt was the marginally better candidate out of some fairly poor choices. Thing is, I am not sure I think Bush is the answer for another four years, and I don’t think I am alone. It’s getting harder and harder to wade through the sewage -- simply put, it's hard to know who to believe.

So could Michael Moore and his films (or his books) shed some light on this shadowed ground?

Turns out, not by a long shot.

Moore exacerbates the problem with a load of pure tomfoolery, elements taken out of context, spun with a master’s loom. This guy should have titled his masterpiece The Blair Witch Project 2: Bush is the Devil.

I’m only sorry I offered stipend to his ever growing bank account in my moment of misguided hope. Of course I blame Moore in part, for looking the role of Average Guy with his respectable girth, disheveled appearance, Spartan lid, and baggy clothes. But no. This man is a con-artist in Wal Mart clothing, a carpetbagger selling swamp water as miracle tonic. Worse, he lives off the profits of his disingenuous campaign against the rich, all the while becoming richer and more disconnected from the masses he purports to champion.

But don’t take my word for it. Want documentation? Below are two sources I highly recommend, one book and one website. I believe every person owes it to themselves to make their own decisions, but also I think it is a tragedy to make one uninformed.

http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20031016b.html

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060763957/qid=1093703720/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-3279748-5550238?v=glance&s=books

People like Michael Moore make me sad for the future, mostly because they represent the worst in all of us: closed-minds, partisan politics, disreputable motives, solipsistic goals, and a relentless desire to hoodwink the masses. Yet still these pugnacious hucksters are rewarded handsomely for their efforts. They grace the covers of our magazines, monopolize the talk shows, and grow fat off the ruin they help to create.

Shame on you, Michael Moore. You offer up a dog turd wrapped in a silk of your own design and call it hope.

It is you who is a blight on this country.

The back seat is quiet.

Boodles and Ice

2004-08-27T06:03:00.000-07:00

So I am reading Esquire magazine the other day – if you are familiar with the publication, you may feel as I do that it’s a lot of fish wrap for the vain with some interesting chum for those of us who don’t measure worth through the eyes of Calvin Klein or Kenneth Cole (if you are willing to swim long enough through the quagmire of pretty boys and girls and the smell of a French whorehouse each time you turn a page).

Okay, so you are hopefully getting the sense that I am jaded.

I am. More and more these days I bite into what I expect to be the tender, juicy Filet Mignon of life only to find a leathery piece of skin that would do Jack Palance’s famous mug proud.

One of the columns I enjoy in Esquire is titled Ten Things You Don’t Know About Women. Invariably this is a beautiful actress or model proclaiming the ten things that make her smile, love, giggle, flush, sigh, or moan. Of course, the point is that it’s normally not big pecs and a tight ass – case in point, a few of the most recent Things (from Mariska Hargitay, in the September issue) are: creativity, high erotic IQ, imagination, and making a woman feel cherished.

Fact is, I am not so incredibly naïve as to believe that Paris Hilton is going to fall for the average schmoe because he has a high erotic IQ and sends his lady a different flower every day of the week.

Okay, bad example. Paris would fuck a leper after enough Finlandia and Red Bull. But you get my point. Imagine my dismay when I thumb backwards (trust me, if you've never tried, you just can’t read a copy of Esquire in the traditional way without becoming lost in the chaff) to find the magazine’s idea of Least Believable Trend is:

“Fat guys and their hot wives on CBS.”

Have we really sunken to this level as a society? That the sight of a fat guy on television (who happens to be funny, charming, and most definitely cherishes his woman), partnered with an attractive spouse (who happens to be curvy rather than waifish, strong rather than flimsy, and sweet rather than slut), is cause for incredulity?

Look, if we are going to measure a man through his qualities – physical, as well as emotional and intellectual – then Esquire is about as far from being a trusted source as you can get.

My suggestion?

Read John D. MacDonald. Namely, get to know Travis McGee.

Once you’ve read any of the twenty-one McGee stories, you need never look further to acquire the mold from whence the perfect man emerges.

Travis McGee, while fictional, and written by a man who ironically shared none of the perfect physical credentials of his muse, takes erotic IQ, creativity, and cherishing a woman, to a new level.

Granted, McDonald created McGee in a simpler time, and the writing – while brilliant and full of prose to be admired – to some may slant a bit toward cheesy when compared in context to more “contemporary” literature. Still, you will never come closer to the epitome of what should make a man tick.

And damn does Travis know how to live life.

He stands 6’ 4”, and in middle age maintains a physique to be admired. A “salvage expert” by trade, his physical presence is matched only by the size of his heart. While he never gives it wantonly, he gives it freely, and cares more for the women he encounters than most have before. He loves and fights like an athlete with a PhD in Physics and Masters in Anatomy and Kinesiology. He understanding the angles, speeds, and forces that bring an opponent to his knees while at the same time harbors the knowledge of the pressures, touches, movements, and timings that make a woman sated. McGee lives on a houseboat in South Florida, his best friend is a hairy economist, and he drinks Boodles and Ice.

Need I say more to intrigue you? Yes, it’s just a ham-handed attempt to summarize the character to be sure; I could never do MacDonald justice. You should read the man and see for yourself. In that regard, here is a good link to a bibliography of the Travis McGee series:

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~mwarble/slipf18/series.htm

I once read an ad for Boodles that proclaimed:

“...full-bodied…this is a classic combination of power and finesse…”

Goes to show MacDonald’s diligence in character construction, assuring that each nuance of McGee tied to the whole.

Would that Esquire, or any other publication that lays claim to the inner workings and the outer appearance of the quintessential man, truly examine the species as John D. MacDonald did.

From his musings, we could learn a thing or two.

For now, here’s a Boodles and Ice to you.

The back seat is quiet.

First Blog

2004-08-22T12:00:00.000-07:00

This is really just my first blog, an attempt to post something simply to see the format.

So apologies for the initial preponderance of bone. I really just wanted to get this thing started. Hopefully in the future there will be something here worth reading. After all, that is the point, right? To publish something that might be of interest to someone out there?

Unfortunately, if you are reading this you have arrived in a state of construction, most likely either by chance or by mistake, and are disappointed at finding the cupboard bare.

At least let me offer you a favorite quote, that you might not leave vanquished:

Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.
- Sun Tzu