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.