My year, part 1 of many.

I thought 2005 was bad.

There was Katrina and while it happened in the last days of 2004, the Tsunami disaster permeated the opening months of this year.

This year was no better.

The wars just keep coming, and they keep getting worse. Iraq is turning into the exact opposite of what I thought it could be. Instead of becoming a beacon of hope in the region, it’s now host to a civil war, where the formerly oppressed majority is getting 30 odd years of pent up aggression out on their old thumb, and while it’s not wrong to blame the US as the fall of the Hussein regime were to happen in 2010 organically instead of in the 2003 chemical destruction, the US certainly has blood on it’s hand.

My worst moment of the year is as follows. The hotel I work at has a Starbucks in the lobby, and it attracts a huge amount of outside business (from people who don’t stay or work or attend meetings in the hotel).

One day a silver jeep pulls up with two guys my age, mid to late 20’s, in it. Both of them were in great psychical shape. I moved their car over to the curb and noticed a picture of the driver on the console. It was his body face down with puncture wounds on it.

When they came out a few minutes later, I asked the driver about the picture. I asked “the picture? Was that an IED?”

He responded, “No, that’s me on CSI: Miami. I was a corpse.” His friend asked him what I had said.

The second guy walked over and showed me his arm, which looked like in belonged on Frankenstien’s monster; layers of grafted skin covered a hollowed out elbow and the arm itself looked 90% the size of his other. He said, “But this was.”

They both smiled and got into the car and walked away. One guy had his dream start to come true through a bloody injury and no doubt made a tidy sum. The other had his arm destroyed in the line of duty. Both my age, and the two of them friends.

Months earlier at the hotel a group called project for peace had their annual meeting where Martin Sheen, Oliver Stone and many others came not to decry the war, but to push for hope and human brotherhood.

I was called over to help get a car out of a Handicapped spot. Having been a valet and valet manager for the last 4 years, I have learned how to drive any car and have written the book for a few of the companies I have worked for. I get into the van and notice there is no driver’s seat, only a metal arm connected to the pedal and brake. I moved the car out of the spot and began to help the man move his wheelchair up the ramp and into the driver’s area. While we talked small during the event, I will remember this event because when it was over, he shook my hand and said “Thanks David. It was nice to meet you, my name’s Ron,” or something to that extent. I knew immediately that it was Ron Kovic, of Born on the 4th of July fame.

Walking away I felt as if my heart had been lifted to a splendid plane. For the first time I truly understood what it is to truly care about peace and why it’s worth living for. I can’t really explain why I had this release, or more accurately how I felt because it was a simple, fleeting high of human goodness.

Walking away from the actor and the former soldier, I felt shocked. I was somewhat jesting about the situation, in part because the pictures weren’t all that horrific, and when I asked, I was almost certain that was the situation. To be relived that he was never really hurt, only to have his friend be the one who suffered an explosion to his arm came like a gut punch following a handshake.

Even if the news nets were to focus solely on the war 24 hours a day, and the newspapers ran only stories on the front page that concerned Iraq, it still seems like fiction. I have family 2000 miles away that I talk to maybe once a week. I know of zero people who are fighting in the wars now. It’s just a world away, and even the videos on CNN or Youtube seem staged, as much as I know newsfilm is a media which captures life, it’s a life I’ll never know. I will always watch footage of the towers collapsing rather than turn my head; I wasn’t there, and while I know it happened, it’s all too impossible to believe it actually happened, to see the events of 9/11 unfold like a most grand Hollywood action film elicits the same impulse as movies like The Day After Tomorrow, The Sum of All Fears, or Saving Private Ryan. It’s almost human nature to marvel at our ability to destroy things, whether it’s an ape using a bone to strike a zebra or a 4th of July Fireworks display, watching violence is our way of self-asserting our dominance. Fake or real, it’s always a display hard to tune out, and sometimes hard not to revel in, perhaps even enjoy.

These two guys going to Starbucks was my first contact with the images on TV. Ironically it wasn’t the film actor who got my attention, but the solider who probably is on film somewhere in the archives of the news footage. I don’t know if I’ll ever forget that moment, even if I’ve already lost his face. For the first time since it started in 2003, I knew the war in Iraq was real.

(continued...)

Two ways from here, one back, and the other back.

I don’t know if much of the people who read the newspaper, and have done so since being a kid, are able to live without having Good Ol’ Charlie Brown in the pages. To lose him is to lose one of the definitive memories and lived in experiences of life. We outgrew Marmaduke, The Family Circus, and Garfield, but you can’t really outgrow Charlie Brown.

I am going to warn you, I am going to go deep on this one. Not mentally, but emotionally. If you grew up in the country in the last 30 years, and if you celebrated Christmas, and this doesn’t well your heart and throat… I don’t know what would.

Before I get to it, there was a great SNL TV funhouse around 1998 or so, which imagined Jesus coming back to Earth around Christmas, and suffering through all the media heads debating the nature, life, and potency of the legacy for their own benefits. Jesus is the protagonist, simply bouncing from TV shop window (a la 1950’s culture/how movies recreate it). And he’s dumbstruck. And then he comes upon this from 1:41 to 2:30, and he just smiles and then sheads a tear. While I am not going as far as to advocate the religion, I am going to fight for the rightness of the moment of clarity that a child does speak, and the honesty from which he strives for. This is a moment that would be done in a ironic fashion now… and while I love South Park, the timelessness of this moment can’t be mocked, maybe for it’s message it can be disagreed with, but for it’s love, it’s unassailable.

So here we go.



Maybe I’ll defend it because of the wrong reasons. I don’t want to lose my childhood, even if at this moment, all that is left are memories. I don’t want to live in a world where I can’t read the Peanuts with my kids, be it 2, 5, or 20 years from now.

++++


Merry Christmas to some, happy holidays to the rest, and good will to all.

(continued...)

short wire

In the last week, I have toyed with my incompetent manager, as if I am trying to wedge indifference between myself and him (not for the joy of it, but in hopes of getting him to admit his ineptitude to me and the rest of the workers), gone back to the only job where I didn’t get promoted at, and eaten at a seafood buffet ranked by the food network as one of the top 5 in the country.

Sometimes, it’s a rough life.

Actually it’s always a rough life. The greatest downside of all drugs is not the hangover, but the reality that waits on the downturn. It’s a shitty, shitty world, and the collection of moments we remember as good only serve as highlights that break the raw.

I think moreover, and I can prove in my life’s work that I am best when I am against the wall, that lives are at their best when pressed to prove their worth.

So it is because of this notion, I write about The Wire.

The Wire went on hiatus after the 2004 season; it was almost on paid suspension by HBO. It was a great show, but it was one that underperformed and a show that drew few new fans.

They were given the last shot by HBO to make the show viable. They were essentially told to make a season that attracts viewers and to grow the name.

What they did was not only to grow the name, but to create the best season of TV ever made.

I didn’t think that that anything would ever top the Simpsons or The Sopranos, but the finale did it, and did so by turning the focus on kids.

Watching the kids believe that there are zombies roaming the streets in one episode just nailed the whole arc of the season. These are 4 kids living in the worst conditions in America possible, and yet the show subtly reminds us they are kids, and as smart as they are, they are still prone to flights of fancy.

Watching one of the kids catch a beating for being called a snitch, another turn back to the corners because he got socially promoted, one realize that the thug life isn’t his game and finally get a solid guardian while the last one goes full on into the game and does so by offing Bodie, all in a coda montage may not seem much in print, but to watch it end the season, I can’t think of a more devastating end to a season, and I don’t think I could have cared about characters as much as I did with this show.

I choke up just thinking about it.

The same way I do about Band of Brothers.

It’s the first season of TV I have seen that immediately caused me to watch it all again. I feel like I lived this season, in the same way I did the ten episodes of Band of Brothers. Talking to people who haven’t seen it is like being on a separate plane of existence, I have lived something so wonderful that they may never know. I wish I could share it with them, and almost feel sorrow that they haven’t lived what I have.

Of the shows in TV history, it’s harder to argue for than it is to argue against. MTM is too dated. Simpsons is a cartoon, and can get away with murder. South Park is going to be dated not by technique, but because of the satire shots in the same way SNL is. The Sopranos has the 1st season, the 3rd and 5th season which are immaculate, but the 4th season is a meditation on life that’s hardly worth rewatching, a 2nd season that trails in places, and a 6th season that tries to de-iconize everything the casual viewer liked about the show. Seinfeld suffered in bits, and It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia showed that this kind of humor can be done just as well, if not better, if it’s with 20 somethings’ instead of people in their 30’s.

I don’t think I can argue that The Wire isn’t the best show ever made. There just aren't any flaws that can be extrapolated to knock it down. I don't want to get the oils of anointment out, but I can't bring myself to stop anyone who cares to.

(continued...)