Keep Trouble in Your Heart

An animal is simply not as important as a human being. But a pet is a significant second in importance to someone imbued with the animal loving gene. I am such a person. I am enamored of all animals, even the ones I am a bit afraid of, like horses, and I think I always have been. No doubt there is some psychological substitution or projection or sublimation involved. So be it.  It is, as they say, what it is. I admit that I judge new people in my life by two things, the strength of their handshakes (the two fingered wet and weak shake is utter doom) and whether they like animals. It is not essential necessarily that they like the same animals that I do, but not to like ANY animal leave me suspicious. It's a positive bonus if they love not only dogs, but my special favorite, the feline. I have always thought my mother was a familiar, having some magical connection with them. I may have inherited that ability. I almost don't have to seek them out. They come to me, or to my vicinity. Maybe it's just the food and its future promise. Maybe it's something more cosmic. It doesn't matter to my enjoyment.

My mother's cat guarded me in the crib when I was a child. The relatives exhorted, "it'll smother the baby!". Depending on the relative, I was probably better off with the cat. I am joking! I think.

I have owned, and/or been owned, by about 7, inside and out of my apartment since I moved to California. Oops, make that 9, I got a couple of new boys about three years ago, two bruisers.  (The outside cats were not mine originally. They were either strays that came to my small but secure backyard, or, as in the case of Ellwood, they were an orange cat that ran away from  living home alone (my next door neighbor was often away) and ended up with the crowd. He was definitely low man on the cat totem pole, but happier for the company.  My first California cat--I had him before I had furniture-died at 18, while being treated for some never diagnosed condition beyond old age. One outside cat was 18 when he died naturally. I took in his near twin, Bud, because there was a neighbor cat (aptly named Diablo) who was trying to hasten his demise and Bud was no longer able to maintain his place as the king of the roost. Bud lasted three more years until I had to take him to the vet in a final emergency, and with the clinic cat Kibble, in empathic attendance, Bud was put asleep. My thinking of all of them comes rushing in because of Trouble. Trouble, my fluffy girl tabby, used to be able to jump to the top of my French windows and stand at the top edge triumphantly looking down at me. "Nothing YOU can do!" her glance confirmed. She was quintessentially curious. It was probably her curiosity that got her lost from wherever she used to live and put her at my front door. She must have been about six months old. Kittenish, but not a baby. I once couldn't find her and figured she was hiding, and when I opened the refrigerator, there she was on the lower shelf, butt facing outward. Another time, she singed her whiskers checking out a pot on the stove. Time passed, and she is nearly 19 years old.  Tonight she is in a clinic, possibly with kidney failure, and worse, if it is diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, her prognosis is a too soon final one. And yet, I don't think she's ready to go. I can feel it. Even as those close to me say, "why spend the money?" either with words or their eyes, she has given that little animal, with her purrs and her softness, with an essence that is distinctly hers, to me. She has been part of my survival, as were the others. And she deserves my very best as her caretaker. The money is the least I can do to give her a chance at a couple more comfortable naps on the top left corner of my bed, giving herself a full body stretch, and then looking to me for food by knocking a water bottle from my headboard right next to my sleepy head with a well placed paw.  

 

 

Thoughts Whilst Creeping In Traffic

It has to be the season that brings more cars to the streets. Sunday drivers shopping on the weekdays. That, and in the downtown area, development bringing the stores to draw them, and the restaurants to rest in afterward.

A couple of nights last week, the crawl to Beverly Boulevard or Sunset via Olive

 

and First was slower than a baby's. The sea of red tail lights before me meant I had to find patience that is not natural to me. It gave me time to observe, and to think. The first barrier, Olympic. There is a bit of the salmon in the driver who must enter the intersection even though it is obvious he will not clear it and will block it at the change of light. He can't go, and the traffic in the opposite direction can't go. Used to be only New Yorkers' were known for leaning on the horn. Los Angeleans have developed the posture, with an equal relish, although it doesn't change a thing. Past that obstacle now, I come to seventh, and a similar buildup. I notice the new loft building on my left. Finally, the chain link fence that has long blocked the entrance is gone. There has been a light on in one of the lofts, of which I can only see concrete ceiling and vents, for days, but this time I see an actual floor lamp. Someone is living in what looks to me like a prison. And downstairs an upscale (is it possible?) Seven Eleven is being prepared for its opening. Not the store I'd put there to revitalize a neighborhood, but I am not a city planner.

Not too far from Cicada now. A dark, expensive restaurant, that never seems to have any people going into it, but yet it is apparently a success. Ice Skating again in Pershing Square. All concrete in modern times, back in the good old summertime of the late 1800s and early 1900's it was a real green strolling park. Across from it is the still swanky Biltmore. I remember that the oldest resident, there have been a few, just died a while back. I think the very first Academy Awards in 1927 was there. I remember a surprise birthday there, thrown by a still colleague, maybe no longer friend, at S'Mereldas. We were able to hold our friendship for a long time, though being on opposite sides of legal advocacy. But I guess it got too hard, and what should have been separated from the personal, became personal. I am guessing we each believe the other responsible. Then Sai Sai. I remember an office gathering there. One of my friends will eat nothing but safe American food, you know Italian, Burgers, spaghetti. There was nothing for her on the menu there. Except of course gathering with the rest of us. We never went there again for an office meet up. The homeless guy is in the street. Do I give him anything and cause him to wander further into danger? And I shouldn't be resenting him for doing it, but I am because I am feeling distrust. Is he really in need? What difference does it make to me if he is? Just a little further up, it should clear. But it doesn't! All the way up the hill past fifth, the still closed Angel's Flight (someone died there a few years ago when the "train" up and down the hill had an accident), and past the Omni. There's a cocktail party going on on the second floor. A baby grand being played. I wish I were there having an apple martini. Meanwhile, streets are closed off and I will trickle toward first and the Courthouse. I take this opportunity to set channels on FM2 and FM3 of my radio---keeping watch all the time on what is before me. As best I can while I can be cited for driving distracted. FIRST! YES!  It has taken 45 minutes to go maybe a mile and a half. Left, left, by Disney Hall, just a little more traffic before I get to the nearly built school on an environmentally unsafe landfill, Belmont.

And I am free! Any deep thoughts in all of this. Yeah, fragments, about life, and death, and work and friendship---but they were disjointed and not profound. And all I can think about now is being able to go more the 5 miles per hour.

In Yesterday's Moment

I go to Long Beach to have my hair cut and styled. I live some 35 miles away. Long story. And not today's subject. It rained on Friday, and my appointment was, as usual, Saturday. A Saturday drive after a good rain, the first good rain of the season. The world was that colorful that comes on a sunny day after the rain.

It was cool, giving the sense of the time of year we born East Coasters still need, no matter how much we love the California warm--a feeling of holiday. Bright. Crisp. On some streets that have annuals instead of palm trees, the leaves were actually turning.

There wasn't any smog. Hills that are normally invisible, and forgotten, were on the horizon. Today I liked hearing 103.5's endless (and not always great) Christmas songs.

On the drive to Long Beach I found myself in conversational prayer. I felt something I too rarely feel and less rarely express, gratefulness. Rosanda snipped, dyed, cut and dried. I caught up on my important reading, OK Magazine, People. Freshly coiffed, I made some Christmas purchases at a favorite store on 2nd Street, Romance Etc. And then I stopped again, along Ocean Boulevard, at the Long Beach Museum of Art's Cafe, Claire's at the Beach. There was a strong chilly wind, not quite as strong or chilly as on Cape Cod after a rain, but strong enough not to be able to sit outside if I wanted to enjoy that Denver Omelette comfortably. But my table faced the outside and the glistening wind blown water. Heaven.

On the way home, the sky was at its best. I wish I could describe the way the clouds formed. Wholly different from usual here----puffy, but huge lines of big and puffy clouds, almost neatly lined, and one in front of me a large malformed donut with wispy tentrils. Maybe it was more like cotton candy. It almost felt as if I could reach through the windshield and take a piece.  Kinda like this, only better than this.

It occurred to me that I felt as happy with these natural moments as one might hope to feel in Paradise. No past, no future. The now of the Divine.

 

 

Bella

Since the movie was produced by a sometime parishioner at my church, Eduardo Verastegui, who also plays a main character, the place has been a buzz for weeks with encouragement to go see "Bella". I hadn't rushed to see it. I remember thinking the night that I saw "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" that down the hall of the very same theatre was this other, uplifting film and I had taken a psychic bath instead in what was on the edge, if not squarely in the middle of pornography--entertainment without ANY redeeming social value. But this weekend, with no other movies to see, and my usual movie pals indulging in that adult male's regression to childhood, The Three Stooges, I decided it was time to see it. It already is on my list of DVD's to buy, when that time comes.

It is a lovely film. It is gentleness in an ungentle world. It is quiet heroism. It is agape.

Some reviewer said the story was contrived. It would never happen in real life. I beg to differ. I have seen, I have lived, things that others would say "could never happen." I won't ruin it. The story begins with a young man on his way to the big time. And then something takes a turn, he takes responsibility, and his life is forever changed. He loses his passion. But he gets it back, and gives to another in a way that is just purely restorative to the soul of the viewer. This viewer anyway.

It isn't being promoted in Hollywood. That is not surprising. It is subtle in embracing life and a sense of conscience. It runs maybe once a day at the Laemmle, and surely will be gone very soon. It wasn't popular because it wasn't given the chance. But word of mouth will lead it into homes in time.

 

 

Lux Aeterna

           

It is just a coincidence that sunny California is not sunny this day. It is uncharacteristically cloudy and damp-ish as night falls. It is much like the day, 33 years ago, exactly, that my mother died at 48, five years younger than I am, today and 3,000 miles from here. I see her as the young woman aspiring to model--but only in photographs for this was before my time. She was pretty enough to be a successful model in the 1940's, and she had then a Scarlett O'Hara 18 inch waist. But, Bronx girls out of Irish Catholic families did not do that sort of thing. Her effort was perfunctory. She, unlike me, never left the Bronx. She married, too young, my father commented more than once, blaming himself, at 18. She was 28 before she had her only child. We know, my father and I, that husband and child were not what she wanted. She dreamt of a life that only became possible in my time, for me, and not for her. I see her as dutiful housewife and mother--percolating with some angst and anger that erupted occasionally, and ironically, in a silent, but intense coldness. She pushed me to education, to religion, and to profession, to excellence, and as far away from her as she could manage, and still live in the same apartment. She was an innocent raging against her world as it was. I see her, softened by illness and the proximity of death, red tam covering the top of her long flowing wig we picked out together, presenting me with a Krum's ice cream cone on Fordham Road.

I do not see her as the old lady she would be today.  Well, I did, once, in a dream, and I am happy to say she was smiling at me.

May Eternal Light Shine Upon You.

 

I Do Not Know Myself

I do not know myself and God forbid that I should--Goethe

 

Just when I think I have plumbed the depths of my frailties, another pops up. I was at a heallth food conscious grocery store tonight, packed with folks getting ready for Thanksgiving. I was feeling neither happy nor sad and certainly not on the edge of a possible moral lapse. I had picked up the turkey, a cooked ham just in case, and was browsing the natural supplement aisle, just in case something struck me. I was at the internal cleansing agent section. A man was a bit beyond me in one of those motorized chairs. As I considered liquid versus pills, if I were going to do either, I heard the beep beep beep, like a truck or car backing up. It was the man in his chair, a stocky blonde man I noticed now, and he seemed to be coming backward to where I was. So courteously I made way. He stopped. I looked at another section of the aisle, really thinking that I ought to buy something healthy to supplement, maybe even counteract my horrible eating habits. And then I heard the beep beep beep again, and he was backing again, and I couldn't figure suddenly why he just did not turn around and go forward. There was nothing obstructing him. And then, it seemed, I say seems, because how do I really know, that he wanted to be where I was again. I was starting to get annoyed at a man in a chair. Maybe he can't walk. I can't be annoyed at him. But I was.

Another woman came into the same aisle. The man continued to back up. He said nothing as he did, to either of us. He just looked back and moved the chair, beep, beep, beep. I had been edged out of the supplement aisle and seemed to be in front of children's cereal, nearly crushed against it. His chair was pretty big.  It took everything for me not to yell at him, still backing up until he had gotten to the milk case. That'd look great, me yelling at this man in a chair, possibly unable to navigate with the ease that I am, that he was a social cretin. The feeling of rage, at him, at myself, at the fact I could do nothing, nearly overwhelmed me. Why did he do it that way? He did not even seem to see me or the other woman. Or worse, he did, and that made me angrier. Were we being tested? I had to get away from there. I was finished. To the checkout. And then the beep beep beep a few registers away, and then I saw him move forward  and around a corner, and I forced him, and my anger out of my mind.

I am no teenager, for whom being "disrespected", if that is what it was, and I will never know, should make a difference. I am grown, and yet, the idea of being invisible to another who would not want to be treated as invisible, nor should be, seemed to increase my rage. So much was speculation on my part.

Sometimes I wonder where is my heart. I do not know my heart. But I disagree with Goethe that God forbid I should. God requires that I do. And change. Easier said than done.

 

Celebrity Citing

 

It was pretty rare, when I was living in the Bronx, New York, that I'd see a celebrity. I remember seeing Nancy ("Chief!") Culp on a Manhattan street some years after the "Beverly Hillbillies" went off the air. If I went to a Broadway Play, I would expect to see someone, like say, Robert Preston in "Sly Fox" or Patrick Macnee of "Avengers" fame in "Sleuth". Oh, yeah, there was the time I saw the man who played Sarek on "Star Trek" as an audience member seeing "Equus". That was a hard one, cause he was in his real human guise, not his Vulcan one.

When I came out here, though, it became a pretty regular occurrence. And each time I have revelled in it. I don't know why exactly. I wouldn't call myself a fan-atic, except maybe when it comes to Pierce Brosnan, and that has been continuous since the beginning of "Remington Steele" to date, and I know, intellectually, that "they" are exactly like me, human I mean, just more famous, and in most cases, with lots more money. It is kind of like treasure hunting, and the treasure doesn't have to be large, just the moment of finding is a pleasure. I once found a sand dollar on the beach near Coronado, and it was whole, which they so seldom are, and that was enough to make it a big deal. That's kind of how it is with seeing celebrities, and it actually doesn't have to be someone that well known, that makes it more fun if it is someone who is on television or in movies, and the "world" doesn't know him or her that well, or it's an old timer, and I glance and say "That's George Maharis" (I saw him in what was then Mayfair, now Gelson's on Santa Monica Boulevard in the 80s--used to see lots of people there). It is the pleasure of fantasy, the fiction of television and movies, meeting my reality. Or the fiction and fantasy becoming one with me, my life, our lives, real and imagined, merging in the flash of a moment.

Today I was at Ralph's, on Sunset, and there was a tall, curly haired young man. I couldn't, I still can't, remember his name, though it will come to me. I do remember his character's name, Bright, I think it was, on the now cancelled series (I liked it a lot) "Everwood." And that's what reminded me I have wanted to write about the many, probably more than I can write here (though perhaps there'll be a part II, we shall see), actors and actresses I have seen in my ordinary travels meeting the illusionists in theirs.

Back to Gelson's, in West Hollywood, when it was Mayfair. There was Linda  (The Year of Living Dangerously) Hunt, trying to disguise her recognizable shortness with a fishing type hat. James Shigeta and I talked about it being better to buy cat food in bulk. Whatever happened to Michael Sarrazin after he did "They Shoot Horses Don't They"--well I didn't see him in many movies, but I did see him on that check out line.

In the old Farmer's Market on Third and Fairfax, Sterling Holloway (the Voice of Winnie the Pooh; guest star in the original Superman series) at a very advanced age, complete with ascot, pompadour and cane, in a corner looking regally expectant. Ted Shackleford, during his spin off days as J.R. Ewing's less successful brother on Knott's Landing. Danny Bonaduce smoking and scowling, in between gigs on cable or radio.

At Hugo's in West Hollywood, Paul Reiser, just before Helen Hunt, Faye Dunaway, searching through her salad and getting more ice in her ice tea, one or more of the Wayans brothers, Connie Sellaca and her husband the former Entertainment Tonight Host, turned New Age musician, John Tesh.

At the Arclight in Hollywood, George Takei scanning (I saw him years ago at an Italian Restaurant in Los Feliz as well) the art on the walls on the way to some theatre, Teri Hatcher in a pony tail, buying popcorn (didn't I read this somewhere too?), Henry Winkler at Michael Clayton, John LaRoquette in don't recognize me, if you want to live mode. Barbara Bain--you know, Cinnamon Carter in the old and true, television, "Mission Impossible".

There are times when the names just flow into my mind and I can't stop them. Tonight, they are only trickling. Ok, a couple more before I go. I should write the names down before I do part II. William Daniels and Bonnie Barlett at the Director's Guild, the old one. I loved that one because I saw William Daniels playing John Adams in New York, my second Broadway play ever in 1972 or so. Ron Howard, and two of his kids at the Egyptian.

Oh, it's coming back to me, but I am getting tired. . .. Cyd Charisse and Anne Francis at the Beverly Hilton.

And I haven't even gotten to my church.

 

 

They're Playing Our Song - Redux

 

 

A long time ago in a galaxy far away called Broadway in Manhattan, I bought tickets for a new musical called "They're Playing Our Song" as a birthday gift for a friend. Since we are talking over two decades ago, and he lies about his age (he tells people that I was his babysitter, or tutor, depending on the occasion)--I think he's only 42 now. Me, I am 53, and he is two months older according to the Julian calendar. Now that I have gotten THAT out of my system. . . So, I bought these tickets, because he was a fan of Robert Klein, and maybe even of Lucie Arnaz, the daughter of television icons Lucille Ball  (of whom he was a definitive fan) and Desi Arnaz, and I thought he'd enjoy this musical. I went with him as ticket number two, although I did not have that great a fondness for either of the stars. It's nice to see a friend enjoying a gift. And I figured I wouldn't hate it. I didn't hate it. I loved it. I saw it three times. He saw it five. I have the album. I still remember the words to most of the songs. I even have the piano selections which I occasionally noodle, badly. It's based on the real life partnership and romance between Marvin Hamlisch (who wrote the music) and his then collaborator Carole Bayer Sager. 

I have come to admire Lucie Arnaz a great deal over the years, because she did manage to leave the shadow of two entertainment giants, and she seems a genuinely nice lady who still loves her parents, maybe her father a little more. I have even seen her club singing act and she is quite good at cabaret. I always harbored a hope that the twosome of Klein and Arnaz would reteam  as Vernon and Sonia for a version of the play. It was their chemistry that really made everything, the story, the music. And then in the summer, my ageless friend sent me a page from the San Diego Symphony about what I thought was going to be a staging or at least a retrospective of the play. I bought tickets immediately for both of us, figuring that even if we ended up not being able to trek to San Diego, I had them, just in case. I never even noticed that the tickets said, "They're Playing My Song" instead of the "Our" of the title, and I really had no idea what exactly they were going to do. But I needed to have them. I needed to know WE COULD go. That was a piece of very warm nostalgia for me.

And then it was November 10th. Neither of us could take the time to stay overnight in San Diego, so it was going to be a marathon road trip, 2 plus hours down, hit the 8 o'clock show and 2 plus hours back. And it was worth the effort. It was a Hollywood Bowl type delight, except it was San Diego, inside and not summer. My friend and I are planning on telling the Bowl folks and Marvin that they need to get together for a show in the summer. Oh, yes, Marvin Hamilsch was there. He conducted. The show had four parts, an opening of TV themes beginning with Dragnet, and including the I Love Lucy theme, as well as some of Marvin's works, like the theme from the Burt Lancaster film of the early sixties (I think) "The Swimmer". We were in the second row, center. We could watch, up close and personal, as Mr. Hamlisch (I shouldn't call him Marvin. He was just so personable, it felt like I know him), engaged a 14 year old boy, named Austin, who was there with his mother, and probably hadn't heard of any of the people he was seeing, let alone music from the 1950s and 1960s. The second part wasn't even in the playbill, it was Robert Klein doing standup, including a song that had me laughing like I used to at Joan Rivers in the 80s, so hard that the still healing scar on my neck from my recent surgery hurt like hell, about a colonocopy. And another about all the places he'd travelled, but the Bronx was the best. (He too is from the Bronx or is that he is from the Bronx, and so am I, given his stature on the stage and mine as a paying customer). Intermission. Then Lucie came out and did a few songs. I couldn't blame her that the music drowned out her singing on at least two of them--that wasn't her job, that was Marvin's and the sound technicians and maybe a poor choice of pieces for that size a place. Still, she looked stunning in her red gown, although I wondered whether she was wearing stockings. That she probably wasn't was resolved by my friend noting her knobby knees. Stockings would definitely have hidden that. A little unfair to have people that up close I am thinking. We are too hard on the performers. But she looked terrific. And then she and Robert did a mini performance of the old play, both of them going right into character as if it were Broadway twenty odd years ago. Fallin', If He Really Knew Me, They're Playing Our Song, I Still Believe in Love (I do, but that is the name of the song). They were in good voice together and I remembered why I was so taken with both of them then. I was back in Manhattan in that theatre, the first time, watching Vernon and Sonia take that trip to Quog, Long Island in a fake prop car, to soup up their budding relationship, just before it broke down, and then love walks in permanently. It was a time machine moment those two and a half hours for which we travelled nearly five. It was what the Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore movie, Music and Lyrics could have been, but wasn't.

They Played Everbody's Song last night. I don't know what young Austin thought. But there were a bunch of middle aged folks and a fair number of people on walkers of a somewhat older age who were transported to a time gone by.

 

 

 

 

 

Tags: They're Playing Our Song, Robert Klein, Lucie Arnaz, Marvin Hamilsch

A World without Conscience

I was originally going to title this entry, "A World without God" but I realized that even in a world with God, humans kick up quite the storm, do enormous damage and outright evil and claim that He is on "our side". He must cringe when He watches us.

I had not heard anything about the movie, "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" before I went to it tonight, except that it was getting generous reviews and word of mouth both in New York and Los Angeles. I should have known the direction that the movie was taking when the opening scene had Philip Seymour Hoffman making buck naked and urgent love to Marisa Tomei. I think they were in Rio having a nice respite from their otherwise numb marriage. The film is told not exactly in flashback, but in point of view repetitions of certain events of an episode in the life of a family. We're not talking about disagreements at the Thanksgiving table here. There is armed robbery, the death of a robber, infidelity (that old family favorite), and two brothers who I'll just call Cain, and Cain. There just ain't no Abel here. Goodness? There is no goodness here. There is only narcissistic betrayal and unremitting badness. And outright murder, of how many people, let me think. . . .like four people. It's hard to count. And it was all because of their childhood. Maybe.

That slippery slope is getting downright icy. I realize that, in a larger sense than I'd like to admit, I am part of the problem. I can watch this stuff and it hardly phases me. There is a contradiction here to say I advocate God, or conscience, and then to go to these films. I am not apparently strong enough simply to stop, to walk away from this form of entertainment. Was there a morality tale here? The most interesting part was when Albert Finney talks to a jewel merchant who has been a fence, who happily reveals to him that the child Finney has raised will do anything for money, no matter who it hurts. Evil is in the world he lets Finney know. No kidding. And I wonder, if I have been too big a part of it simply by being there tonight watching it. I have to think about this. Going to the movies has been a big part of my life.There aren't many uplifting films, though I could have gone to see "Bella" down the hall, which I have read is a morality play compared to what I did see. Oh, well. It is done. Grist for the mill.

I suspect that there isn't a conscience of anyone that hasn't been damaged in the last 20 years. I know what I should do. Developing and maintaining a conscience is a choice. And needs a prayerful mind. So hard. So necessary.

 

  

Everybody does it

When I was a kid, whether said explicitly or implicitly, the phrase "Because I said so" was one of my primary guides. If it was said by a parent, or a teacher, authority had pronounced and authority was always right, and always good. Because they said so.

Unfortunately in my first working years, the bosses I had in both New York and in California, both nice enough folks, if you were in a social gathering, were willing, shall we say, to stretch their ethics. In fact one of them said that to me, "You are going to have to learn to stretch your ethics." Now, mind, as I have often noted in these pages, I am not a saint. So, while I would say that ethics is important to me, it was counterweighted by that old emotional and moral bulwark, "Because I said so." I couldn't for the longest time figure how to deal with an authority figure, that had to be right, that I knew in my heart of hearts wasn't right, and said that what they wanted was okie dokie. I realized early on that saying "no" was going to be hard enough that I might find myself in trouble before I got the hang of it. I was caught in a state of cognitive dissonance. What I thought I knew just wasn't so.

Another phrase that those in various professional businesses who get into trouble say with their medical boards or psychology boards or legal boards or for that matter, the cosmetology board aside from "Because I said so" is "Everybody does it." I was talking about that to somebody today, a person who is in the regulation business, like me, and lamenting that whenever somebody gets caught doing a professional no-no,say, maybe fudges a little on the truth in say, some paperwork, that's the magic phrase--heck man, why are you bothering me, "EVERYBODY does it!" Then there is a concomitant suggestion that the one who is enforcing the rule (you are not supposed to fudge on the paperwork, or take a little extra money from medi-cal for your patient, or take money of the client's) is less than compassionate. You think YOU wouldn't do something like that, holier than thou?

I am not sure of the logic there. I am just as capable of doing bad things as the next djinn, though I pray I will resist as each weak moment comes, and I know that I won't always, but I also know that there have to be rules.That is simply inescapable if we are to survive, let alone if you believe in higher principles of ethics or morality. And hey professional folks from plumber to auto repair shop, to lawyer, to doctor, psychologist, accountant and you name it, "Everybody does it" is what a child says, not a full grown adult. It is a non-sequitur. And you know, in that context, the third phrase, "If everybody jumped off a cliff, would you?" has a certain symmetry.

What's the point of this diatribe. When you are a child, I guess, you have to abide by "Because I said so."  You are just getting the hang of things, and authority at least has been around longer than you. And it is ok to answer, "Everybody does it."  because a kid's pre frontal lobes aren't fully formed.  But when you are an adult, you think about what you do and the consequences of what you do, or are supposed to be able to do some critical higher thinking. And you question those who say otherwise. Sometimes you even answer to a Higher Authority.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Firestorm in Los Angeles

 

Since Sunday, every time I have checked to see what has happened to the Malibu fire, there has been a new one, in Lake Arrowhead, San Clarita Valley, Soledad Canyon, San Diego, some places not 30 miles from where I live in the heart of the city. The flames eat the brush, and come upon houses in a fast burn, and destroy the safety and security of family after family. One ember and there is a consumption and a desolation as the tendrils waft over what used to be someone's bedroom. In San Diego, some 450 houses have been destroyed. It is hard to keep track of the damage to property and to lives. Luckily there has been little death. I don't know if that has been an accident of fate or the lessons learned after Katrina.

Even where I work, the sun casts a gauzy light on the ground and the clouds are the particulates of the devastation. The outside smells like a newly stoked fireplace, only we know of the disaster over the hills.

Except for one or two of the fires, there has been little talk of how so many came upon us so quickly. Malibu was wires and electrical currents crashing against one another and throwing sparks in the Sunday night wind. The perfect storm because of our drought conditions and dry foliage. But, I can't help wonder if there is more to it. I am not a conspiracy theorist, but I always have this unsettling feeling that someone is testing our ability to protect our ordinary lives and our surroundings. I wonder if as the days go by, and if the wind settles as it is beginning to do, whether questions will lead to answers that make speculation fact. I hope I am wrong. It is enough to have nature do us terrible damage. We do not need more from the hand of man than already we suffer.

On the ride home, everything looked the same going up Beverly Boulevard. The usual landmarks were intact. There is no fire here, just the remnants of fire elsewhere. But the reporters on every station talk about the worst firestorm in California history, and we are declared a national emergency with 500,000 or more people evacuating their personal preserves for bare cots or the kindness of family and friends. The air is hot at 7. There is a dead calm along the city street that seems to portend something more fearsome--what we usually call earthquake weather, but tonight is firestorm weather. The last thing I notice as I walk into my city apartment is the muted moon, full and warning.

I think of Dante, "All who enter here, abandon all hope." It has been several days Il Purgatorio, more for some than for others. Life is a contradiction. The very fires that wreak havoc provide for the most beautiful sunsets.

 

Tags: Calfornia Fires of 2007; Il Purgatorio

Hoping for "The Hoff"

As a friend of mine just observed in his blog, living in the Hollywood, West Hollywood, Los Angeles, West Los Angeles, even downtown, areas mean that we run into actors and actresses pretty routinely. Sometimes more than once. We don't talk of course. They don't know us. We only know their public personas. Sometimes we know way too much about their personal troubles, self inflicted and otherwise. There is no place to hide. They have to buy food, clean their cars, pick up their kids, go to the doctor.

I was going with my dad to the doctor at medical offices nearby an LA hospital. In the plaza area, a tall man strode into the building. I have seen him walk in countless TV shows, and aside from his obvious height, it was unmistakable. David Hasselhoff. It was a side view, but a good one, and hisdetermined pace and angry, or was it sad, face was scrunched and lined. Some of his demons are well known, just as recently as last week, he was in and out of a program. Twenty-five or 26 years ago, I saw him the first time, at a mall just a few blocks from the site of this second sighting. He had just begun to be recognized for the show "Knight Rider". His hair was dark, his face was fresh, and he was browsing a place that used to be called "Futronics" or someting like that, one of those places that had the earliest forms of what would be electronic gadgets. "How about this one" he said to a beautiful blonde, before Pamela, before the kids, when it was ALL before him. We are the same age. It was all before me too. I had just moved to LA from New York, where I was a newbie attorney. I was trying to pass the California Bar and half believing I could really be a television writer after a year or two at lawyer-ing. Or while I was lawyer-ing. Everything was possible. The tall young actor was already realizing a dream, so quickly, soearly. Funny, in that, I think I do know him, and he me. We are all travelling the same road, notwithstanding the apparent differences.

And even if we don't ever talk to one another, we are travelling it together, with the occasional nod of acknowledgment and hope. Here's hoping for a more famous traveller on the road. And don't hassle him. He deserves a break, just as we all do.

 

 

Tags: David Hasselhoff, the Hoff, hope, fame

Do Not Be Weary

 

I am a practicing Catholic, emphasis on the practice part. Practice thus far has not made anything close to perfect, but if, as Thomas Merton suggested the desire to please the Lord is pleasing to Him, then I am less worried about the cacophanous notes.

The thing is, though, the practice even, can be a drag. I don't mean by this that I don't WANT to try, but that sometimes trying is antithetical to the emotion of the moment. You (if I'm lucky) three readers of this blog may remember the one recently where I talked about the tendency to curse when another driver does something I feel disses humanity, with the dissing of this particular human in humanity being the triggering event. Well today was beyond some one person, and if I complained openly, I would look like, maybe even be, a jerk.

And then today, there was a bigger, distressing backdrop, the Malibu Fires, the Canyon fires, seven fires, property loss, the marring of what is genuinely some of the most beautiful country to wake up to. And it was being destroyed.

I couldn't stop watching the news about the fire, and so I left a little later than I usually do to pick up my dad for Church. I was still early--we tend to go early--but I was later than is common for the two of us because I was watching the fireman heroically standing their ground against unpredictable wind that fanned the fires they were barely controlling with helicopter water drops and ordinary hoses.

When I left, I realized that it was also the day for a charity walk, one of several that occur in my neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods during the year. It means that most key streets, the ones that the area dwellers need to get around to do weekend chores and, like me, go to whatever service is usual for them, are closed off. And there is usually ONE alternative, as was true today from my father's home to the church.

There was no one guiding the traffic and people cut in from gas stations, from alleys, from narrowing lanes, in a disorderly way that meant those of us who waited in the proper lines never seemed to move. Knowing where I was going, I tried not to blast the charity event, the police who were standing at blockaded streets chatting with one another, and the various mondo vehicles that improvised methods around the rest of us trying to be good citizens. My father had several solutions to the congestion, none of which I can repeat here.  I pointed out, hey dad, we're going to Church and should at least try to be marginally forgiving. He said that there are some things Church just doesn't cover. Well, I don't know about that. Still, I couldn't disagree that such large events ignore the needs of the people who live and work in an area with a kind of self-righteous obliviousness (is that possible?). On the other hand, they'd probably say that it's not like they do it all the time, and sometimes the greater good has to take precedence. Get over it. Part of the problem I guess is that we don't all agree about what is the greater good. We pressed on, each of us having a role at the 12:15, he an usher, me a lector. Not that they couldn't do without us, and my guess was, a lot of people were simply not going to make it. Then there is this silly sort of prideful thing on my part. I just feel like the harder "they" are making it for me to do this, get to the Church, the harder I have to try. I say prideful, cause I am not sure that the Lord has much to do with it, and that it is not a little bit of bravado, one-up man ship, see, I could do it, you couldn't stop me sort of stuff. . . .As usual I digress.

As my father posed worst case scenarios, I saw that we'd probably be only about five minutes late, having made the turn onto the Church's block, and we could both slip in  slightly the worse for wear, though probably not in a particularly prayerful mood. The contrast was never more simply marked between the things of this world and what we were trying to get to--the things of heaven. The world was definitely ahead.

If there were 20 people in the church when we arrived, that was a lot. The priest had one server and I slid into my lector garb (I put on a too small size) and into the altar area. I just hit it for the first reading, and did the wrong one. As did Martin, because the Book had not been turned to the right page.

It wasn't till after the Gospel, when I went to the other side of the altar that I finally settled down, calmed by the San Damiano Cross that hangs above the tabernacle, and by the homily that reminded us of our need to trust God in the face of the trials of our life, whatever they may be. 

The storm passed. It was ok. I was there. I hadn't cursed once. And I received the Eucharist with a too transient joy.

My dad and I went to Petco which was trying to adopt out a whole bunch of cats and kittens, and he opined on the destructive profligacy of nature.    

Do not be weary, I thought, for He is with us. Well, that's what this djinn believes in between the existential thrashing.

  

 

Moonlight Mania

I used to have, well, I still have, a soft spot for Ron Koslow's creation, "Beauty and the Beast".

I just recently did a marathon viewing of the Season Two DVD. Beautiful DA is rescued after being attacked by thugs, and is nursed by a man-beast who lives in a hidden community beneath the New York subways. They are from different worlds that can never mesh. She cannot live with him for she has her role in the world and in being a helper of his world. He though having the soul of a poet, with his cat like face and mane hair cannot ever be seen in her world. And, yet, they have a cosmic connection that is romantic, and unbreakable, and week after week those moments in which it is confirmed, in which their emotional harmony resonates, well, naturally, this three season show (the third season unfortunately killed off the DA Catherine and the series was never the same and shortly after cancelled) is a cult favorite from the 1980s.

Flash to 2007. I saw Ron Koslow's name on the show Moonlight, and decided to watch. Mick St. John is a private investigator. Sam is a tabloid journalist. Mick has a life that he cannot share with anyone, he is a vampire, been around in undead form for nearly 100 years. Scoff if you want, but it works, and I am hoping that the network won't give up too soon and let it work for lots of other viewers. It can. It will. In the old days media moguls, you gave shows a chance to develop, to find an audience. There is a connection that is cosmic, and romantic, even though she has a live in boyfriend, a District Attorney, as it happens. The connection here, though, began way earlier, when Sam was just a little kid and she was saved by---Mick St. John. And, she knows what he is----and still cares for him. A lot. Even if it means that they can't be, they are.

I mean, she gave him her blood in this last episode. You can't get closer that that, right? Or maybe you can? But the series has to last for that to happen. It is the old show, re-created and updated, and again the push-pull emotion resonates.

There are a lot of viewers, well, women viewers, wholike the teaser of impossibility tempered with the hope of possibility--love colliding and then succeeding between two special souls. If you are laughing now, cut it out!

Love keeps trying to triumph, and so should this series. I know I'll be getting the first season DVD. Fans fan the flame, ok?

Tags: Moonlight

We're shut

 

I have seen a movie and at least one TV show, I think it was "Ghost Whisperer", where a store, when business hours were over, had a sign that said "We're shut" or "Shut" instead of "We're closed" or "closed". I can find no official announcement of the change, but I know that it is coming. The big  unnecessary corruption of a perfectly good phrase.

I have seen it enough now that it is concerning me. Well, not concern actually, but why are they messing with this? Why is "shut" better than "closed". In fact, "shut" has a kind of permanent feel, where "closed" has a feeling of the possibility of opening again, which in fact, it does. Whatever it is. A coffee shop. A clothes store. A Kinko's. I want to feel that it isn't like, a slap in the face, and "shut" feels like a slap in the face. Not that the day has ended and we are going home to have dinner, and to sleep, but we don't want you there, we are SHUT. GO AWAY!

Has anybody else noticed this or is it a symptom that I have spent far too much time at the same job, in the same apartment, in the same state (not New York and definitely not the Bronx. Please tell me that the stores aren't telling Bronxites that they are "shut". The Bronx shut? Tell me it ain't so!)?

Somebody out there said to himself, or herself, (I hope it wasn't a woman) that we needed a new way to say that our favorite hang outs weren't open anymore. Why? Surely there was something more meaningful to do? Like prevent people from eating their favorite unhealthy burgers. Or telling people they can't smoke in their own homes. Shades of double think and double speak! I don't want us to change the basic, the "We're closed". No one asked me. Did "they" ask you?

 

 

 

Tags: Sorry, we're shut

The Conscience of the Lawyer - Michael Clayton

 

I know. I know. There is something paradoxical about any lawyer finding his or her conscience. Most people figure lawyers don't have conciences to find.  But that is the fictional gravaman of Michael Clayton, George Clooney's new movie offering. And pardon me, lawyer that I am myself, this comforts me.

The first ten minutes tell us the following:  the senior partner has had a manic depressive episode during a deposition of a plaintiff in a big case that's been going on a very long time in which his firm is defending a VERY BIG firm, called U North, accused civilly of causing a whole bunch of people to get cancer. He tears off his clothes and rants until he is carried away to the local Minneapolis jail. A long time lawyer in the New York firm, but not a partner, is Michael Clayton. He is the "fixer", the guy the firm, the clients, all sorts of people call when they get into trouble and the legal system needs, well, a little sub rosa molding to order. Such a man is well paid, and well regarded in a dicey sort of way, but he can't be a named partner, too many questions. Michael, a divorced father and ne're do well gambler who is in debt up to his eyeballs because of a failed restaurant business he had with a more ne're do well brother, is called out of a seedy poker game to take care of a little problem.  A Westchester, NY citizen and firm cash cow hit a pedestrian on the way home to his alcoholic wife and expects not only dispensation but a clean slate. He is quite annoyed at the person whom he left to die and at Clayton for not being the magician he was billed to be. Michael's also on tap to take care of the larger nasty problem of the wild eyed senior partner (masterfully played by Tom Wilkinson) whose breakdown has compromised the BIG case. Peeling away from the home of the self entitled Westchesterite, Michael drives as if he is sick of everything, but we don't yet know what everything is. He pulls into a not easily visible road and stops suddenly. There are three horses on a hill in the dawn light. He gets out of his car and hikes in the chill morning air to the top of the hill. Calmed, momentarily cleansed, he reaches out to touch one of them. His car explodes.

I'll let the movie tie it all together for you. But suffice it to say, some people, some apparently very ordinary people are not very nice in this film, and make murder about as clinical a thing as I have ever seen on film.  Wilkinson (senior partner) is crazy, but he has discovered something BIG in this BIG case that he just can't accept, and Michael, well, he is almost too late in discovering what Wilkinson (senior partner) discovered. Got it?

But both men also discover they they still have souls. And it costs to restore the truth.  

 

 

 

 

 

Tags: Michael Clayton, truth, conscience

The Hills, and The Arclight, were Alive!

 

 

Julie Andrews strode into The Lower 7 at the Arclight to the podium. The audience which had been made restless waiting for nearly an hour after the announced start time, for the stars, among them Billy Crystal, to introduce When Harry Met Sally, Jack Nicholson, to introduce One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest, Kirk Douglas, to introduce Spartacus in the original Sunset Dome, Warren Beatty, to introduce Bonnie and Clyde, and of course, Julie, to introduce The Sound of Music in their respective theatres in this Hollywood stylish megaplex, stood and applauded the woman who, a mere 42 years ago, was the young Maria Von Trapp, finding her bliss with the Captain and his seven children at a lake mansion near Salzburg. One of the children, then "16 going on 17", was there too, Charmian Carr, as well as the widow of the director, Robert Wise.

After Julie made the mandated thank you to Target, the main sponsor of the AFI 40th Anniversary salute that brought together the stars and the movies together for the retrospective, she told a couple of stories, including one about filming and re-filming the opening sequence where she glides through the mountain field and turns to proclaim the hills alive, each time thrown to the ground by the whirling blade's bold breeze, she was gone, leaving us to her younger self. I had forgotten how extraordinary she, those children, Christopher Plummer, Richard Haydn, Eleanor Parker, were against that real life backdrop of mountain and trees, and sky, and lake. This is a film to be seen on a big screen. I think I still remember the opening sequence as I first saw it as an 11 year old, with an aunt, at the Rivoli Theatre in New York, a classic Manhattan theatre, like so many others, torn down without a thought of its cinematic, its cultural importance.

I had seen pieces of the film since then, always on television, and it had never matched its original impact. But on this modern day big screen, I felt it again, first, an incomparable innocence, and energy and hopefulness, even a spirituality, no doubt brought on by the chant, the Mother Superior who sends the young postulant back to find and face her life and the wedding in a great ancient church and then, of course, as the Nazis take over Austria and ordinary lives, a darkness, and then a hope again as the family escapes far too easily than would really be the case, on foot, over the mountains into Switzerland.

When I heard what films were available for us to see, I knew all were classics, but this one, in a way the others could not be, maybe were not meant to be, this one is enheartening. There was 19 year old girl next to us, with her mother. I had no idea that anyone that young would be so enthralled with Julie Andrews, old enough to be her great grandmother (as I am old enough to be her grandmother, the once 11 year old), and with a film so out of sync with the crashes and explosions, or at least the machine gun fire of Bonnie and Clyde, that define her generation's entertainment. And enthralled she was. Almost tearful in her joy. I wish I could have spoken more to her about how this movie and this actress became important to her such that of all the movies she chose to see, this was the one in the group. Was what resonated with her, a bit of what resonates with me still so many years later? Perhaps it was the exhortation in song to Climb Every Mountain. Or the comforting idea that "when the Lord closes a door, he opens a window." I'll never know. But I feel a kinship to that teenager I'll never see again.

It is late. I am off now to peruse my AFI 40th Anniversary Program and maybe to make a small prayer of thanksgiving, before seeking sleep.

 

 

 

A (Short) Sojourn in San Diego

 

There is so much to write. But, after a packed weekend, I am too tired to write it, yet too entranced not at least to begin. It wasn't intended as a spiritual weekend. But, for me, it ended up being one. One of my friends, and a friend of hers, wanted to see the Dead Sea Scrolls which were being featured in San Diego. We had been talking about this potential trip for months now. None of us seemed to know that the Scrolls had been shown in Los Angeles, the Bowers Museum, a few years ago. But we did know that such opportunities don't come often. And so it was more or less set. The day before we were to go to San Diego to spend the weekend (since our Saturday tickets were fairly early 9 a.m. at the Natural History Museum), I had some trouble with my eyes. I had been having a small infection that ebbed and flowed for a few weeks. It was more irritation than crisis, but it was damping any desire for travel of any kind, even two and a half hours south particularly after a full work day. Truth be told, I am not much of a traveler anyway. I like being in a place, but I hate the getting there, so I tend to avoid  the process, and I guess foolishly avoid the rewards of the destination. Bad habit. My friend is persuasive, though, and my guilt spoke to me anyway--so I went. I get car sick when others drive, a resurfacing of a childhood problem, so I originally intended to drive by which I am spared nausea, but ultimately, I became the front seat passenger, hoping that my problem would not surface. It didn't. The whole weekend was kind of like that from my point of view, for I speak for no one else, things sort of just went right, more or less. By the time we got to San Diego it was after 12 a.m. and not being a morning person, an 8:15 call to be in the lobby of the Sheraton Suites, particularly as I woke up cozy in my suite's (with living room courtesy of Priceline.com) bed, was quite the test. But there I was with my coffee, on time, and ready to go. The trip out of the serpentine garage took longer than the trip to the museum, but we were there fifteen minutes ahead of time, security checked and in on time. We joined the Essenes at Qumran for two plus hours,-- that meditative, monastic set of Jews who pre-dated and co-existed at the time of Jesus. They hid in earthen jars discovered only in 1947, Aramaic, Hebrew and occasionally Greek versions of the Torah they transcribed and prayed over. Or, as some, less entranced, scholars speculated, the scrolls were brought in from elsewhere to what was nothing more than a pottery plant. There is Isaiah, Ezekial, the Psalms in the steady hand of a long dead scribe, demanding the purification of the Jewish community in anticipation of the Messiah to come. We stand before fragments bathed in dim light, papyrus, and parchment, delicate, cracked, faded, and painstakingly translated by a competetive community of scholars of different faiths who did not want their foundations shaken. Jealous and guarded they did not share to the professional public for so many years after the finding in the 40's to the late 1990s. What was found by a simple bedouin shepard in a cave in 1947 became a complex cause celebre. But reading the words and just a glass away from the ability to touch the ancient texts, I felt something, no more, perhaps than a spiritual vibration, but also a sense of the power of the idea, of the word, of the Word, and its many permutations that lead at once to contemplation and to confrontations unto death.  

There was so much to absorb and I found my mind awash such that only a book or two could quell and organize all that I had seen. I have yet to read these books. And hope that I do. I only know that we are brothers in the same search as that of the Essenes. The search that some, including me, think was jump started mightily by the act of Christ on the Cross, if only we cooperate and join and accept, but a search that life itself commands per se whatever the philosophy or faith, even if that faith is atheism, the fight against belief.

I had no further plans or wishes for the trip. Anything was fine, but when someone suggested the Mission of San Diego de Alcala, the very first mission in California, founded by Father and Saint Junipero Serra, I was intrigued. I did not push, but I hoped for the visit. I know the controversy over Serra, and his treatment of the American Natives. But I sometimes question the insistence on judging someone from, in this case, 1746, with the sophistication (and are we really all that sophisticated, let alone different), and retrospection of 2007. And then, we were about 4:30 in the afternoon, strolling the gardens, and taking in the simplicity of the church itself (the third Church is from the 1800's, since the earlier ones were burned down), and the history from the small museum bearing the name of Serra's successor at the mission, Father Jayme, martyred on a space on which we stood (we did wonder, skeptically, how they KNEW that was the spot). All seemed so quiet and perfect there. Even the grass and the flowering shrubbery had a peace about it, perfect in form, well tended.

I had no idea that this was not only an active, but a vibrant, modern parish. Where most parishes seem to be reducing the Masses celebrated on Sunday, this one has nine between the SaturdayVigil and Sunday. I had no particular intent to go to Mass there, and hold up my friends from our next activity, but I could not stand the idea of not attending, the more I saw the red candle that, as always, marks the Presence of Our Lord, amid the breeze washing through the old adobe church, the birds, the setting sun that streamed through the wooden windows. I had to stay. My friends, who had loved the place as well, drawn by what, the simplicity, the beauty, the sense of peace,  were receptive to waiting for me not far away. And sitting in a pew right by the door that opened into the garden with its statues of St. Francis, of Father Serra, I felt safe, secure and happy. My friends and I had been discussing faith, and spirituality and I had been unsure of my points, because it is unsure in this Cloud of Unknowing, but for forty five minutes, no proofs were needed and I did not have to try to articulate anything. I just had to be there and accept the Presence accepting me (this thought comes from a book, so let me give credit to it, "The Strangest Way"  by Robert Barron). I had no sense of foolishness in seeing myself a sinner and less in those moments of simple ritual prayer with a crowd that seemed so joyful in its praying of the prayers that in my own parish seems lethargic. It was packed. They sang. They participated. It was good. And I was grateful.

There was so much else in the weekend, but these events alone set the tone, and today, returned in the early afternoon, my heart has been singing. My heart so rarely sings. And I am grateful.

 

 

 

 

We Will Never Forget. . . Please, Let Us Never Forget!

On the lampshade of a desklight in my office, I long ago placed a ceramic flag pin still attached to a piece of white cardboard given to us by our building management company after the attack that killed three thousand of our fellow Americans. It says, "September 11, 2001. We remember".  It  is just about six years since I put it there. I see it every morning when I turn on the light. Sometimes it registers. Sometimes it does not, as I sip my coffee and sit down to read the bevy of e-mails of the day. 

Last night, I happened across a documentary that I had seen once before, the memories of people who survived that day, barely, in many cases, interspersed with video of the gaping hole and the glowering flames and the billowing smoke before we all knew exactly how bad it was. A fireman or policeman who survived the full weight of the collapsing north tower on him along with some 12 other people, one of them a disabled person he had helped carry down to the sixth floor, tried to makesense of his living while so many others died. They all did. They probably all still do.

I cried again at the devastation repeated in front of me. I know I am not the only one who saw it again, and wept.

And yet, here we are six years later, we citizens, seduced by our i-phones and HD TVs. We clamor and argue among ourselves in self-entitled smugness, about Bushies, or a "Fate Worse than Bush" as Harper's put it , in Rudy Giulani, or horror of horrors, a Hilary presidency. We think it can all be solved by simply staying out of the way of the radicals du jour who would kill us with a smile and put our bluetoothed heads on a stick. While we say we support our troops, we do everything we can to guarantee their failure with our bickering. The tragedy of each death is compounded by our lack of will, and a comcomitant lack of strategic direction, as if no one is listening and biding his time on the other side of the world. And those who claim they would lead us, fight each other for that small territory on Pennsylvania Avenue rather than a serious defense of liberty.  Liberty costs. Just like Grace costs. And who among us wants to pay the price? It isn't like World War II, or, is it? The same things aren't at stake, or are they? Some people think that they are. Some don't. Most people would rather not think about it. Me, sometimes I am in all three camps, at different times, of course.

I noticed, driving to work today, that, in response to an Internet exhortation that we all demonstrate that we have not forgotten 9/11, about half of the cars had on their headlights in the broad daylight. I felt a certain pride in this small gesture. I did it myself.  But what are we really ready for when we say we want to preserve our liberty and the liberty of the world? We say "We will never forget!" Some stations won't even show the images that I saw yesterday, a protective censorhip, to spare us pain. But pain helps us remember. "We will never forget!"  Into what does that phrase translate?   

Personally all I can do is pray for the change of the human heart that can only come from an Intercession of the Divine, that I will be shown the right thing, and do it when I see it. Everything else is just chatter and confusion.

 

 

 

 

 

Tags: September 11, liberty, we will not forget

Intergenerational Rock On!

 

  I'm thinking this was the 70s. They were a little older on Saturday.

  Then and

 

   now

 

Originally, I was thinking of titling this entry, "Grandma and Grandpa Rock On!" because intially the women I saw on Saturday in front of me in Section M (nearly nosebleed section) of the Bowl (and the last outing for the season, alas), were at least sixty-five. The gentleman with them, looked to be, conservatively, seventy. Compared to them, me and my friends were bare youths in our early 50s, and heck, I was having difficulty comprehending just how fast the time had past since our headliners had even seen Billboard Magazine let alone be on the top singles list. So I was including myself in the grandma and grandpa crowd that looked to be wending its way into a Hall and Oates night, with the opening act, the Spinners. It also looked like it wouldn't be close to a full house as we scanned the upper and lower levels and the spaces around us. But then, not only did the baby boomers plus, the baby boomers, show, but the Xers and maybe even a few Ys. I won't count the 6 and 7 year old brother and sister behind us, cause they did not come of their own volition and probably don't know who Justin Timberlake is, let alone, Hall and Oates.

The Spinners spun as of old, one quite bald member giving his all, with the dripping sweat visible to my low level binoculars. But every song, save one, I recognized , had been a hit, is still on every oldie station, and, I could place in a moment of my life. One of the last in their lyrical litany was Rubber Band Man, which brought me back to my Assistant Music Director Days (courtesy of a friend who was music director) in between college and law school at WXLO in New York, 99X, then. My time there, smack in the middle of a staff shake up, re-listing the same 40 songs for the play list, quelled my yearning for radio work, but was a joyous experience, if only for the chance to see Barry Manilow being interviewed and to get an ambiguous grunt of hello from Jay Thomas, then a pretty popular DJ. And while I was working there, I did get a chance to see Queen--we are the champions of the world- for free at Madison Square Garden. I have come to appreciate them more in later life than I did at the time. I am a really late bloomer. . . .

The Spinners had hit after hit---their songs permeated my college and early working life. When Hall and Oates came out, after what one of my companions called "the shortest Hollywood Bowl intermission in history" (I was still at the concession stand and contemplating a purchase of something that flashed colorful light at the Bowl store, in commemoration of my last sojourn there for the year), the audience was primed. And, except for the fact that "Private Eyes" was never played, they delivered. It wasn't until the first encore that the 30 somethings behind us finally had their shouts of "Rich Girl" quelled. And they did a couple of songs, like "Me and Mrs. Jones" that weren't originals to them, but we didn't care as we sang the chorus together, all generations, "Me and Mrs. Jones ssssssssss, we have THANG goin' onnnnnnn on." At the more energetic moments, the audience, even in the circle, where they are usually the most well behaved staid, got up and danced.

It was-almost-raucous. I felt positively ageless. My friend said that there were going to be a lot of people taking geritol in the morning from all the retro bumping and grinding.

I was fine in the morning. 25 of my 50 something years had melted away!