Family Man

 A great man once said, "A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.” Keeping in mind that this was a fictional character whose greatness is primarily measured by those in the film history community, not the parenting workshop folks. 

Yes, the Corleone family was a close-knit bunch, and they were big into celebrations: weddings, birthdays, and the occasional christenings. The youngest son of Don Corleone eventually took over the family business, a multi- tiered affair with dealings across the globe. And he still found time to make his son's first communion and his nephew's baptism. The latter of which coincidentally took place while all the rival gangs were being murdered across the city, but that's the kind of multi-tasking it takes to be a Godfather. 

That was, as I said, fiction. In real life, when you do bad things sometimes you have bad things happen. Like when you cheat on your wife. Repeatedly. With current and ex-wives. And you have a business that involves all manner of ongoing possibly nefarious schemes. And sometimes your family life gets in the way of your extracurriculars. Heaven forbid they should keep you from your tee time. 

Or your depositions.

Or your many and varied courtroom appearances. 

So this guy, who has previously expressed his devotion to family in varied and interesting ways, like suggesting that "if she wasn't my daughter..." or cheating on his most recent wife and his most recent offspring. With an adult film star. Whom he ended up paying an exorbitant amount of money to keep her quiet, especially when he was trying to be not only a respectable family man but the President of the United States. 

Well, as it turns out, this second fella is not fictional. Nor are his legal problems. Like the hush money thing that went to trial this week, because the way he paid the adult film actress involved falsifying business records. Because he wanted to keep it secret. Kind of the way he has periodically kept his youngest son, Barron secret. 

Now this guy is complaining because he "won't be able to attend Barron's graduation." The good news here is that he remembered his son's name. Now, if I were a betting man, I might wager a considerable amount of money that this guy cannot name his son's school. Or his grade. Or his age. 

But since I'm not a betting man, I'll just say that I don't believe that Donald Trump is much of a "family man."   

Gettysburg Address

 Crimes? You want crimes? How about crimes against history?

When I was eleven years old, my family traveled across the country to visit historical sites, eventually landing in Washington DC, where we were immersed in all that city had to offer in terms of our past and our present and what would eventually become "the good old days." 

But first, we stopped in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. For those of you who are not familiar, this was the site of the bloodiest confrontations of the American Civil War. Over fifty thousand soldiers perished over the course of the three day battle. Anxious to achieve a victory north of the Mason-Dixon line, Confederate General Robert E. Lee pushed ahead into Pennsylvania in hopes of forcing a negotiated surrender from the Union. For historical purposes, we have generally referred to the Confederacy as "the bad guys" and the "losers" not just of this battle but of the Civil War. They were the ones who wanted slavery. 

The Union was led by General George Meade, who chased Lee and his battered army south again, but failed to surround them, thereby missing the potential Union victory. The US Civil War went on for another two years after that, with the Union eventually securing that delayed victory and slavery was abolished in the United States. 

I was able to take most of this in when I was in elementary school. One might imagine that a grown man, born and raised not far from the site of that piece of history might be able to assimilate some of this information, especially in preparation for a speech to be given on those hallowed grounds. But if you're a former game show host, twice impeached and facing multiple indictments, maybe your mind isn't fully on your history lessons: “Gettysburg. Wow. I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to look and to watch. And the statement of Robert E. Lee ― who’s no longer in favor, did you ever notice that? No longer in favor ― ‘Never fight uphill, me boys, never fight uphill.’ They were fighting uphill. He said, ‘Wow, that was a big mistake.’ He lost his great general, and they were fighting. ‘Never fight uphill, me boys!’ But it was too late.”

Sounds a little like the bloated sack of orange protoplasm might have missed the memo. Points for getting the city and state correct. And naming one of the major players. But this is the guy who would like to Make America Great Again, but he can't even remember what made America great in the first place. 

Maybe he should stick to selling bibles and sneakers. 

Rock On

 I don't generally do requests, but I got a text from a college friend that tweaked that nerve. That nerve that drives the word-linking process to the actual sitting down and generating sentences. He started, cleverly enough, with a link to a Bruce Springsteen performance of his song Ghost of Tom Joad. Tom Morello, guitarist for Rage Against the Machine appeared with Bruce in this clip, and it raised the question of guitars and noises made with them. From there, it was my friend's opinion that auto-tune is a "technology with great potential that has been abused horribly by subpar vocalists." 

I could not argue with that viewpoint. But I felt more inclined to discuss the noises made with electric guitars. This was the guy who introduced me to Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew and all the wonderful sounds of King Crimson. It was his passion for six strings and his understanding of the way they could be used to make music that simultaneously crushed my dreams of playing rock guitar at the same instant the furthered my passion for the music other people were making. He showed up in this blog once upon a time before. See if you can pick him out. 

There are two profound memories of this man's guitar prowess that come to the fore in my mind: Him sitting in the hallway of my apartment, straddling the front wheel of a bicycle, plucking at the spokes in a contemplative re-imagining of the way Mr. Spock played his Vulcan lute. The other vision is that of lugging his amp into the bathroom of our freshman dorm, turning it up to eleven and watching the terrified faces of the boys reacting to the power chords he slammed into that tile echo chamber. 

Ultimately, he grew up to be a physician. Not a musician. Not professionally anyway. Which brings some of the same pains I feel when people watch me make cartoons. "Why did you give it up?" 

I didn't give it up. Neither did he. Those things slipped down the ladder to avocation. The talent to make interesting sounds or shapes does not die an easy death. On the contrary. They live on in our hearts and minds while our hands are busy writing today's assignment on the board or saving the lives of those who need saving. 

And when I hear that roar of a guitar, even if it's through the speaker of my phone as I remember that time when I saw it. I heard it. I felt it. In the hallway of my apartment. In the dorm bathroom. 

Auto-tune sucks. Rock and roll is forever. 

Return

 Three weeks is a long time to do anything. 

Three weeks, interestingly, is also a long time not to do anything.

Or something.

Specifically, the recent injury to my knee forced me to curtail my exercise regimen. The doctor told me that it would probably take "about three weeks" to recover from the sprain that initially had me limping about wherever I went, grabbing onto hand rails and making unfortunate sounds as I lurched from one spot to another. Having a week off school for spring break probably helped support the healing process, as well as eschewing the voice in my head that insisted that I really should be out there running. 

Somewhere. 

But clever me, I was able to show uncharacteristic restraint by restraining myself from trying to go out for a run before I was recovering from what I had initially assumed was the harbinger of my left leg being amputated at the knee. Finish it off. I'll figure it out. Just take it and I'll move on with the one good knee. 

I just did not want to have to go through the rehab.

And yet, there I was, a three weeks and a day after the initial injury, plodding along like nothing ever happened. Except for the choppy little strides I was taking and the challenge I was experiencing getting any sort of rhythm to my steps. The voice in my head that has always chimed in at the half-mile mark suggesting that I would be much better off sitting on the couch was righteous with indignation this time, but that was also right about the time that what I remembered about this running thing turned out to be true: I don't have to go fast, I just have to keep going. 

Which is what I did. 

Until I stopped. I took the brace off my left knee and didn't see any swelling or blood or bones sticking out. I was able to walk to the shower and balanced without any additional support. 

I was back. 

When Legends Die

 OJ Simpson's death is not breaking news. Orenthal James Simpson, The Juice, has been dead to me for thirty years. I understand this is a cruel assessment of a situation that had effectively nothing to do with me. But I made up my mind right about the time that Mister Simpson's life became a media circus that did not include football, rental cars, or limp attempts at acting in major motion pictures. All of that, prior to the low-speed chase that became the new media mode that would surround him for the rest of his stay here on Planet Earth. 

As a junior at the University of Southern California, OJ rushed for 1415 yards, scoring eleven touchdowns in a ten game season. For his effort, he was awarded second place in the race for the 1967 Heisman Trophy. The next year, he ran for 1709 yards and scored twenty-two times. In 1968 he was awarded the Heisman Trophy. This success allowed him to be the first selection in the 1969 NFL draft. He spent nine years playing for the Buffalo Bills. In 1973, he rushed for 2003 yards in fourteen games, becoming the first running back in the National Football League to eclipse the two thousand yard mark. After that high water mark, his production remained impressive for a few more years, but in 1977 an injury kept him sidelined for most of the season, and the next year saw him traded to San Francisco, where he played two more less than glorious years. In all those years, OJ Simpson played in a grand total of one playoff game with the Buffalo Bills, scoring one touchdown. 

All of which suggests that OJ was a great college athlete, and then played on some very mediocre teams in Buffalo who relied on him for his star power and efforts. Until he was unable to perform. But he was able to parlay his successes on the football field into becoming a celebrity spokesrunner for Hertz Rent-A-Car. He was part of the galaxy of stars who appeared in The Towering Inferno. He had a little part in Roots. He played a doomed astronaut in one of my favorite guilty pleasures, Capricorn One. Then after he was officially retired from professional football, his screen appearances were limited to playing a slapstick foil to Leslie Nielsen in the Police Squad Trilogy. 

By 1994, fame had slipped away from OJ Simpson. Then came the Trial Of The Century. If you missed the end of that one, one of the most expensive and coordinated defense teams in history managed to get the former football star acquitted. Which would have been sensation enough, but then he had to go and get himself mixed up with a bunch of thugs who needed his "help" stealing a bunch of sports memorabilia. For his part in this crime, The Juice was sent to prison for nine years. He was released in October 2017. Fifty years after his initial gridiron fame. 

Did OJ Simpson stomp on the Terra? Well, it's kind of a mixed bag. Certainly the mess he made was caused by all the stomping he did. Does he deserve to be remembered? I will go ahead and say yes, but primarily as a cautionary tale. Will he be missed? I'll leave that to you. 

Plan 9 From Arizona

 Greetings, friends. We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. Criswell predicted this way back in 1957. Back then we had only recently discovered the power of the atom, and dreamed of one day traveling to outer space. We hadn't even unraveled the mystery of acid washed jeans. There was so much out there to be imagined. 

Flying cars.

Personal jet packs. 

Dating apps. 

I remember watching Frankenstein 1970 right around the time I turned eight. And the movie turned twelve. In 1970. The major advance that the filmmakers were able to put forth at that time for the "future" was that the guy who once played the Frankenstein monster was now playing Doctor Frankenstein. Pretty fantastic, right?

That disappointment was nothing compared to the news that came out of the Arizona Supreme Court this past week. The justices upheld a law from 1864 that banned virtually all abortions. For you history buffs out there, this was a law that was put in place fifty-eight years before The Grand Canyon State became a state. Once the US Supreme Court blocked the 1973 Roe v Wade decision, states went right to work creating their very own frameworks. 

Arizona did this by taking a peek in the Way Back Machine. You might remember the Way Back Machine from the early sixties when it was featured in a series of cartoons starring Mister Peabody and his boy Sherman. Who would have guessed that this mechanism would become a tool for legislation in the twenty-first century? 

And how do you suppose this happened? Well in 2016 the Arizona Supreme Court was expanded from five justices to seven, all appointed by Republican governors. You might remember 2016. That was the year that a former game show host was elected president and proceeded to do everything he could to tear up the United States Constitution and install himself as the self-appointed savior of the land. Just before the global pandemic that killed millions of people while he worked on his golf game. And installed his own set of Supreme Court Justices. 

Then the flying saucers landed. 

Warning Label

 Judge not lest ye be judged. Those were the words, more or less, from the Sermon on the Mount. Pretty heady stuff. Which is why I was taken aback just a little when I heard this odd echo from my father centuries later: "People can be so judgmental." Not that my father was particularly Christ-like, but it did give me pause to consider the way I go through my life. I don't get out of bed without making some sort of judgement, rational or otherwise. Will this day be worth my time? Judgement. Should I feed the cat? Judgement. Shall I wake my wife up and ask her for a ride to school? Judgement. All of this takes place before I set one foot out the door. 

Once I am outside, the rest of the world seems to beg for my judgement. The easiest target is quite obviously the motorists who careen across the lanes of traffic as I make my way to my destination, seemingly oblivious to the rules of the road and my own careful example. This is only the beginning of my day. 

Which is why, once I sat down at my desk to take a look at the headlines I took notice of an article that stated: Mother Of School Shooter Issues Warning. You may remember from previous episodes that I have been following the story of the Crumbley family of Oxford, Michigan. Over the past two and a half years as the parents were brought to trial on manslaughter charges connected to their son's murderous rampage in November of 2021 at his high school. After being found guilty, Jennifer Crumbley issued a statement that read in part: “This could be any parent up here in my shoes. Ethan could be your child, your grandchild, your niece, your nephew. … Your child could make a fatal decision, not just with a gun, but a knife, a vehicle, intentionally or unintentionally."

Judgement time: No, Jennifer. It could not happen to any parent. Parents who do not purchase guns for their teenaged sons probably won't fall into this category. Parents who buy cars for their teenaged sons won't fall into this category, providing they don't simply hand them the keys without having them go through the necessary education and testing that is required to operate a motor vehicle. Parents who live in a country plagued by gun violence and continue to ignore the signs socially and maternally are much more likely to leave their son at school with the gun they bought him for an early Christmas present. The gun that was not properly secured. The son whose warning signs were ignored. 

Judgement? Yes, I have a bundle of them. And I apologize to my father who art in heaven for tossing them around with such callous disregard. But I also appreciate that he raised three sons, one of whom became a peace officer and never fired his weapon in anger. The other two have lived a life free of guns and knives, and to a fair degree, cars. You want another judgement? I think my parents did a fine job.