 |
| NOT DAVID HOFSTEDE |
I was never a fan of Mike Tyson, back when I used to follow boxing, although I'll admit that the idea of Tyson playing himself as an animated character in Mike Tyson Mysteries is just short of very, very cool. What Tyson was good at was being a villain, and having a villain around always makes drama, whether of the sporting kind or not, more compelling.Call it Tysonography, our refusal to believe that even the most extraordinary talents fade quicker than we expect. There are a lot of “What’s wrong with Tiger Woods” stories out there right now, and some of them are interesting, but I still suspect they miss the point. Nothing’s wrong with Tiger Woods except that he’s human and he’s fading and it’s the most obvious thing in the world but, like with Mike Tyson, we willfully refuse to accept it.
 |
| "WISTFULNESS' by misterXCV |
I was never a fan of Mike Tyson, back when I used to follow boxing, although I'll admit that the idea of Tyson playing himself as an animated character in Mike Tyson Mysteries is just short of very, very cool. What Tyson was good at was being a villain, and having a villain around always makes drama, whether of the sporting kind or not, more compelling.Call it Tysonography, our refusal to believe that even the most extraordinary talents fade quicker than we expect. There are a lot of “What’s wrong with Tiger Woods” stories out there right now, and some of them are interesting, but I still suspect they miss the point. Nothing’s wrong with Tiger Woods except that he’s human and he’s fading and it’s the most obvious thing in the world but, like with Mike Tyson, we willfully refuse to accept it.
Here a year or two back me and Loretta went to a conference in Corpus Christi and I got set next to this woman, she was the wife of somebody or other. And she kept talking about the right wing this and the right wing that. I ain't even sure what she meant by it. The people I know are mostly just common people. Common as dirt, as the sayin goes. I told her that and she looked at me funny. She thought I was sayin somethin bad about em, but of course that's a high compliment in my part of the world. She kept on, kept on. Finally told me, said: I don't like the way this country is headed. I want my granddaughter to be able to have an abortion. And I said well mam I don't think you got any worries about the way the country is headed. The way I see it goin I don't have much doubt but what she'll be able to have an abortion. I'm going to say that not only will she be able to have an abortion, she'll be able to have you put to sleep. Which pretty much ended the conversation."In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club -- the "hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history."
Talk of Doom. We are all doomed in the sense of Psalm 90, "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away." To drag doom into politics is almost always attitudinizing, worse when something bad has actually happened, because it substitutes preening for thought. I spent a quarter of a book dealing with the doom and gloom of Henry Adams, and at least he was a genius. Get to work.
A few days before Christmas, I was walking home from work. My regular route takes me past one of those establishments which is often euphemistically referred to as a “gentleman’s club,” the term “gentleman” being applied to various degrees depending on its degree of appeal to the hoi polloi (i.e. truck drivers or professional athletes).
At any rate, what caught my eye was a sign in the window featuring a portrait of what looked to be a Vargas girl dressed up in a Santa suit (or, at least, what Santa would wear if he were in fact a Vargas girl), with an appeal for “Toys for Tots.”
OK, I thought. I suppose even in a place like this people aren’t immune to the spirit of the season and the desire to help out the less fortunate, especially children. If their appeal brings a little happiness to some poor kids at Christmas who don’t have much, then bless their hearts, even if they are a little degenerate.
Upon closer inspection (yes, the things I do for my readers), the sign turned out to be for something that wasn’t quite “Toys for Tots,” although it was close. (I’ll leave it to your imagination as to what it really said although, as they say, consider the source.) But as I continued home, I wasn’t quite able to shake off this thought of strippers colleting toys for kids, and what it all meant.
Most of us believe, to one degree or another, that there is an innate desire within everyone toward goodness. We think, or like to think, that even the meanest, the most irascible, the least pleasant people we know, are all capable of unexpected acts of kindness, even if they’re few and far between. Why these acts of kindness should have to struggle to emerge is just one of those mysteries of life.
In Harlan Ellison’s original script for the classic Star Trek episode “The City on the Edge of Forever,” we are presented with a Spock whose logic is at a loss to explain why a character who is “amoral, evil, a killer. Selfish and capable of anything,” would still risk his own life to save the life of another. Kirk, who understands humanity in a way that Spock cannot, can only offer a philosophical reply:
We look at our race, this parade of men and women, and the unbelievable harm and cruelty they do. And we sigh and we say, “Perhaps our time is past, let the sharks or the cockroaches take over.” And then, without knowing why, without even thinking of it, the worst among us does the great thing, the noble deed, that spark of impossible human godliness. And we say, “Perhaps the human race is entitled to a little more sufferance. Let them keep trying to reach the dream.”
Spock, understanding, sums it up: “Evil can come from Good, and Good from Evil.”
It’s not logical, the thought that a fundamentally bad person can still be capable of selflessness, any more so than why a fundamentally good person can still commit acts of coldness. But then, there are many things about humans that are not completely logical.
*****
Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the title of this piece. Ah, The Rat Pack - Frank, Dean, Sammy, Joey and Peter (the one everyone forgets). The other night I was watching an old Frank Sinatra TV special from the mid 60s. What a talented man, I thought: charasmatic, confident, able to phrase a lyric like nobody's business. Great actor. Generous, both with his talent and with his money. And, as many people have written, a pretty nasty guy as well: abusive, domineering, thin-skinned, four-times married, a brawler, a dropper of friends at the smallest provocation.
Yeah, Frank was a very tough, very complex guy. The rest of the Pack, though perhaps not as flamboyant as Sinatra, had their own share of flaws - infidelity and divorce, drug and alcohol abuse, arrogance and distain, selfishness and cold-blooded business dealings. Sammy converts to Judaism, and you have to wonder about that. Heaven knows I'm not trying to point fingers here; we all have our own share of flaws, and in proportion ours could well be even worse that that. But it goes to show, as I mentioned earlier, that the human animal is not only a very complex one, but most illogical as well. You look at a celebrity - a movie star, an athlete, a politician, or Frank Sinatra - and you struggle to reconcile their feats and their flaws, their tenderness and their cruelty. On the one hand you marvel at the gift, on the other you despair at the waste. Maybe you feel guilty for liking them so, knowing what you do about them; maybe you make excuses or try to understand, but you can't stop liking them anyway.
Flaunting many of the rules of common decency, treating several of the Commandments with distain - truly, you worry about someone's mortal soul in a case like this. But, you think, there must be some kind of trade-off here. How can someone cause such pain, hurt, humiliation - and at the same time touch you in such a way that produces delight and wonder? There must be something about the charity, the generosity, the simple pleasure and entertainment that they provided for people - that couldn't all be for naught, could it? It has to count for something, you think.
And so you resort to the great bastion of Christianity - hope. You dare to hope that God, in His infinite wisdom and justice, will temper His justice with mercy. You think of the joy you experienced, the memories you have, you recall the generosity you received - and you hope. You trust, because you know that God's judgement is perfect, but you still hope.
Avery Cardinal Dulles writes at length on the population of Hell, addressing the question as to whether or not we can dare to hope that all will be saved. Salvation, we know, is offered to all, even though not all will choose it. As Paul writes, the gospel contains “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith” (Rom. 1:16). So we look at The Rat Pack, we love them for the pleasure they gave us, how we laughed at their jokes and thrilled at their talent, how we listened to their music and for a while felt young again. And we hope.
Ultimately, as it should be, salvation remains a mystery of God's province. And while mystery often causes doubt, it also creates hope. As Cardinal Dulles writes,
Paul, without denying the likelihood that some sinners will die without sufficient repentance, teaches that the grace of Christ is more powerful than sin: “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20). Passages such as these permit us to hope that very many, if not all, will be saved.
That, indeed, is hopeful. So do we dare to hope that The Rat Pack, for all their flaws and imperfections, are there with the rest of the saints, playing their heavenly music even if their halos might be a bit tarnished? Such a hope might seem to some to be most illogical. But humans, as Spock found out, are most illogical beings.
In our unfortunate society of self-esteem, we have lost the attitude of what the penalty of losing means in our society.
Thus came a recent incident where recently, I was reduced to Nancy Kerrigan complaining after seeing my rival beat my alma mater in the worst possible way, denying a postseason bid and forcing me to moan while everyone else had a party. This had me contemplating suicide off the Ponte Vecchio into the Arno River, a certain Geisel character who took my Christmas away, losing my car, and hearing the dreaded “losing horns” on a Radio Television Luxembourg show.
All four of these symbols of losing are painful, and when I think of each of them, they mean different things, but the same to me, who has lost my Christmas and now can’t go anywhere.
SUICIDE OFF THE PONTE VECCHIO INTO THE ARNO
This one’s funny. In Gianni Schicchi, which I have said is one of the funnier operas I have attended, Lauretta pleads with her father (the titular character of the opera) she wants to find a way to marry Rinuccio from the Donati family (whose patriarch had just died). The will of Buoso Donati states the entire empire is going to the church, and the monastery. Gianni was hired by the Donati clan to rewrite the will so they could earn their take instead, and the dueling clan irritated him, so he wants to leave. Lauretta pleads not to leave, since she loves Rinuccio, and in the signature aria O mio babbino caro, she requests the will be rewritten so that she can marry Rinuccio. Failure to do such, she pleads, will lead to her suicide off the Ponte Vecchio into the Arno River.
I told my voice teacher a week after the depressing loss and she responded, “Did you see Gianni Schicchi (there was a performance three weeks prior to this incident)?”
I grinned.
A CERTAIN GEISEL CHARACTER WHO TOOK MY CHRISTMAS AWAY
Do our children forget to read today? The feeling that my Christmas had been lost to the Grinch (How the Grinch Stole Christmas) was the exact feeling of depression. And how many people know that the Grinch is a character of Theodore Geisel, who used his middle name in his pseudonym.
LOSING MY CAR
Fox Cable Networks’ Speed Channel airs a television series, Pinks, hosted by Rich Christensen. The show, easily the most popular series on the channel, was created by the University of Northern Iowa graduate, who admits he has sold television show concepts for a living. Many shows were rejected, but this concept was given a trial on Speed with just a small budget, a few officials and three cameras. Its popularity is based on a best three out of five 1950's-style street race on a drag strip, complete with the show devisor as lead official and starter. The winner takes the loser’s car (sometimes truck, motorcycle, or snowmobile) with him in this battle.
My anger with losing comes to the point I think I am the loser on Pinks. There is something about not being able to lose, and the show is one of those shows which teaches the concept of not being able to lose. Losing leads to losing the car.
THE DREADED LOSING HORNS ON A RADIO TELEVISION LUXEMBOURG SHOW
Radio Televison Luxembourg, which is 90% owned by Bertelsmann AG, is the successor to Mark Goodson - Bill Todman Productions, and the owner of the entire library of game shows of that firm through its FremantleMedia arm.
RTL’s current game show library includes Family Feud/Fortunes (the UK version uses the latter), Temptation (was known as Sale of The Century until recently; from the Reg Grundy library), two shows on the CBS roster, The Price Is Right (Drew Carey) and Password (set to be revived during 2008 with Regis Philbin), the Idols franchise, and international versions of The Apprentice, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader / 10-Year Old (the show’s name differs by country).
Many Mark Goodson shows play a losing horn after a contestant loses games, such as losing bonus games on many of their shows, especially with double overbids or certain painful losses on The Price Is Right, which is RTL’s only show that currently uses losing horns.
Now you do know why losing hurts, and sometimes too many game shows teach the lesson that you cannot afford to lose, since losing results in painful sounds or in the worst case, losing what you have.
Much has been discussed in recent months about the amount of lead in different items - especially children's toys - made in China. I don't have any answers, just questions. For example:
Is there more lead in toys now than there used to be?
How much lead was in those now-antique, quaint, metal toys from Victorian times?
How much lead was in the toys that kids of my generation used to play with 40 or 50 years ago?
Were the window sills we all teethed on as toddlers painted with lead?
If there was more lead then than now, why aren't we all driveling idiots, or dead?
Is there more lead allowed in items used in other countries, and, if so, why aren't they all driveling idiots, or dead?
Does more research need to be done on the amount of lead that is risky and just how it affects us?
Is lead the alar (remember Meryl Streep wailing about "the children"?) of our day?
Is the lead scare politically motivated because all these things are made in China?
See, I don't have answers, but maybe the questions are enough for now.
Wednesday night is usually grocery night in the Hadley household. When you live downtown there aren't all that many grocery choices; the nearest one, Lunds, is just across the river, but it's not the kind of place you go when you live on a budget
So for us, the choice is usually to go over to Roseville, where there's a Cub and a Super Target. You get there by going out on Washington Avenue and taking a left on to the 35W bridge that runs over the Mississippi River, about six blocks from our condo. I'd get home from work and do a half-hour on the exercise machine, we'd have a quick dinner, and then we'd head out between 6 and 6:30.
But it was hot today, in the 90s with a forecast of rain, and Judie had been out to lunch with my aunt and was tired and didn't really feel like going back out, and so we decided to wait until tomorrow. Because of that, we were home at 6:20 when the first bulletins came on the local news that the bridge had collapsed, that there were perhaps 50 or 60 cars in the water, that it was a disaster.
About that time we became aware of the sirens outside. Now, living where we do (downtown, not far from Hennepin County Medical Center), you get used to the sound of sirens, and so perhaps they'd been going for a few minutes. But these were continuous, and there were so many of them. Police cars, fire engines, ambulances. It could only be for one reason.
As I said, we're only about six blocks from where the bridge collapesd. By going out the front
door of our condo and crossing the street, we could walk across the Stone Arch Bridge, which parallels 35W. A woman from our building was headed out there; her husband usually drove across that bridge to get home, and she hadn't heard from him yet. Judie asked her when she'd last talked to him; she thought about 20 minutes, which would put it after the collapse, but when she looked at her watch she thought it might have been longer ago than that. She was shaking, fighting hysteria, headed down to see what she could find out.
There were perhaps hundreds of people already on the bridge, with more coming from every direction. Emergency vehicles screamed across the bridge, which is usually limited to pedestrian traffic. Black smoke rose from the scene, the fire from the semitrailer that was shown prominently on TV. We could see a portion of the bridge standing up at a 45 degree angle, other pieces beyond our sight, in the river.The street was jammed with cars, trucks, people. The sirens were endless; police and fire boats coming from Stillwater, a town located further down the river from Minneapolis. More police cars, patrolmen hanging out the doors, asking people to get out of the way. A blue command center being set up. Flashing lights everywhere. A Metro bus, slowly moving toward the river, the sign on the front reading "Rescue Bus." People were taking pictures, taking videos, talking on their cell phones. We ran into a co-worker from my office, who took that bridge every day to and from work. He didn't really know what to do, just kept walking down, to see what he could see.
For all its faults, Minneapolis is a pretty ordinary place. Sure, there are the murders and the gang violence, but there's never been a major airplane crash here, the most famous fire we've ever had was in an empty office building on Thanksgiving night and didn't hurt anyone, there just isn't anything to compare to what we saw and heard tonight, at the far end of our neighborhood.
It's dark now, at 9:30. The sirens have eased off; everyone who needs to be down there is already there. The large surface parking lot behind our building has emptied out, and there isn't nearly as much traffic out there as there was a while ago. The rain that was forecast has held off, but the temperature is still high, the air heavy and still. The news coverage, locally and nationally, will continue into the night, and the headlines in tomorrow's Strib will be predictable.
Tomorrow is Thursday, and it will be grocery night for us. We'll have to find a different route to the store, of course, or a different store. It's true we could easily have been on that bridge when it went down tonight; it was the right night, and while we often would have been going over it around 6:30, there have been nights when it's been closer to 6:00, or 6:10. It might be somewhat melodramatic to suggest that we should have been on that bridge tonight. A lot of people should have been, and weren't, and we can be grateful for that. But I don't want to put that fine a point on it, though, on how close a call it might have been. It was enough to have been that close to it, to see the flashing lights and hear the sirens and see the helicopters hovering over the neighborhood, to see your city and a road you take being featured on CNN and Fox News.
It was enough to be that close, to see and hear it all, to listen to people worried for their friends and loved ones. It was enough, to remind you once again (as if you really needed reminding) of the fragility of life, the fleetingness of it all. And for those of us of faith, it doesn't mean that life is meaningless; rather, it it reminds us of how packed with meaning every second of life is. It was enough to make you think about that decision to stay home tonight, and to go on your knees in Thanksgiving. It was enough, perhaps, to remind you that life is never enough, that there is always more to experience, more to do, and less and less time in which to do it.
"Here a year or two back me and Loretta went to a conference in Corpus Christi and I got set next to this woman, she was the wife of somebody or other. And she kept talking about the right wing this and the right wing that. I ain't even sure what she meant by it. The people I know are mostly just common people. Common as dirt, as the sayin goes. I told her that and she looked at me funny. She thought I was sayin somethin bad about em, but of course that's a high compliment in my part of the world. She kept on, kept on. Finally told me, said: I don't like the way this country is headed. I want my granddaughter to be able to have an abortion. And I said well mam I don't think you got any worries about the way the country is headed. The way I see it goin I don't have much doubt but what she'll be able to have an abortion. I'm going to say that not only will she be able to have an abortion, she'll be able to have you put to sleep. Which pretty much ended the conversation."
Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men (H/T to First Things)
We don't blog often on personal experiences at this site, but on occasion something comes along that's so distinctive, it begs to be shared.
This is one of those occasions.
So a friend of ours and her husband are in New York on business. Currently, they're at a sidewalk cafe sharing a drink with an acquaintance. They've just concluded a discussion on the war, in which they agree that although the war may have been a disasterous idea, it would be equally disasterous (not to mention impossible) to simply pull up stakes now and leave. As the acquaintance puts it, it's a sure bet that as soon as our troops leave, some thug would come in and take over.
At this point they gradually became aware that, not 10 feet from where they're sitting, there's a mugging in progress. This goes on for some time before the acquaintance, who our friend thought was about 70, could stand it no longer. He gets up and accousts the mugger. “Stop it! Stop what you’re doing!”
The mugger appeared too startled by what was happening to retaliate.
When the acquaintance could see that this level of intervention was doing no good, he turned, grabbed his cane and started whacking the mugger across his body and legs, all the while yelling at him, “Stop! Stop this right now!”
By this time both the mugger and the victim are starting to look a bit uneasy about the direction things have taken. It's as if the acquaintance's intervention is disrupting the social contract, so to speak.
It should also be noted that the fracas is causing no apparent disruption in the business as usual of the café.
Finally the mugger, weighing his options, decided to beat it, followed quickly (and in the opposite direction) by the prospective victim. Whereupon the Good Samaritan returned to his table, and his astonished companions.
The ensuing conversation went approximately like this:
Them: “What were you doing?! How could you do something like that?!”
Him: “What he was doing was wrong.”
Them: “Well, have you ever done anything like that before?”
Him: “No, never.”
Them: “Then why did you do take a chance like that? You could have gotten yourself hurt!”
Him: “Would that have made what he was doing any less wrong?”
And with that the conversation returned to the original topic.
It's at times like this that the novelist is tempted to simply throw his hands up in dismay, because you just can't make this stuff up. Real life is always better than fiction, no matter what you try to do to prove otherwise.
