Oprah

Does it make me a bitch that I get misty watching Yahoo replays of Oprah's holiday giveaway? Don't answer that, but I do. I watch the faces of out-of-work, middle-American housewives and gay men in her audience light up like a Busby Berkely dance sequence upon winning a year's supply of candles. Those are some great smelling fucking candles.

I don't blame Oprah. She probably feels like shit for being so wealthy for so little reason and, once a year, with the full cooperation of every corporation involved, she buys her guilt by giving away household items to people without houses. The candle is gonna look great on the middle of the tent floor; thanks Oprah.

We are broke and broken as a country. Game shows were fun when I was a kid, people won money in the hundreds of dollars, which made them as happy as winning $100,000 today. Montey Hall would slip a $50 into the hand of a blue-haired old lady because she had a paper clip in her purse--and we all smiled. Why? Because back then, $50 was mildly life changing. This woman who won it lived in a functional society. She didn't need, or really want much beyond the life she had. Her parents didn't have indoor plumbing, television, etc.. Life was good, and $50 could buy a fuckload of Manhattans.

I get why these people in Oprah's audience act like they just got the call from the governor when they win a lifetime supply of boxed Mac-n-Cheese. Things are that bad. We are that broke. Oprah is our only hope.

Yosemite

There are few things as impressive as Yosemite National Park, even with kids and a monster-in-law in tow. I get a bit of a charge, a sense of my insignificance and a nose full of clean air (which is welcome after driving through Fresno. Jesus, what a shit hole), every time I go. The wife, family and I stayed at the "Scene better days" Pines Resort in Bass Lake. The cabin was clean and full of furniture that Elvis would have bought. The fold out couch, where my wife and I were to sleep, was little more than an oddly placed group of steel bars covered by a cocktail napkin thin "mattress". We ended up sleeping downstairs in the bed next to the MOL, so I can check that off my bucket list. The boys, 14 and 11, are getting too old for these kind of trips. They fought the entire weekend when they weren't bitching about the trip, me, my wife, God, etc. I only hit the older one, a quick, attention getting punch to the forehead, on the trip home--so all in all, I did well.

It turns out that it's hard for me not to hit the kids. That's all I knew as a kid. You don't where underwear, talk back, look away while being spoken to, wham--not the scar inducing, shrink necessitating, life-ruining kind of wham, but the kind you write about in a blog thirty-five years later to be sure. Every time my kids act like idiots, which is their genetic disposition, I want to smack them, which is mine. I do pretty well, but the oldest one, as I said, got me on the way home. He chased his brother out of a gas station mini-mart, screaming something about tiny's having stolen $5 from him. I call the younger one "tiny" because he's not. Get it? The little fucker's 11 year old feet are bigger than mine. Anyway, I digress. The Toehead chases Tiny out of the mini-mart and is losing what's left of his 14 year old rational mind in public. I tell him, with utter calm, to relax and explain the situation--he escalates. A fourteen year old boy's temperament is measured by a Richter scale and Toehead went 7.2 in 2 seconds. I tried repeatedly to get him to calm down, eventually whispering between clinched teeth to "shut the fuck up." He didn't comply, that is until I punched him (25% strength) in the head. After that, he climbed into the back seat, his brother (undoubtedly feeling responsible) gave him the $5 and everybody shut the fuck up for the next 50 miles. I'm not drawing any morals from this episode. For one thing, even Toehead will be able to kick my ancient ass when I'm 90, but I can't say I feel real bad about this moment.

As I kid, I could count on getting my ass kicked at school if I said the wrong thing to the wrong person. Shit, our principals could paddle us in public schools. I'm not asking for a return to corporal punishment as the main method of dealing with kids. For a ten year period, I recoiled every time my dad scratched his head. Still, I do wish something else worked on a young boy the way a quick punch to the head does. I haven't found that something but I haven't given up and I don't plan on increased punching. Besides, every parent is allowed to punch every one of his children once on a trip over two days in length. It's in the manual.

Twenty years from now, Toehead probably won't remember the punch to the head, either from the concussion or simply from passage of time. He may not remember that I took him to see a tree that is 2700 years old either. He will remember that I took him places and that he should take his kids places too, even if he has to punch one in the head to bring him in line.

The Afterlife Can Wait

There are moments, amidst the shit that makes up 90% of our life, when the sky opens up, when animals talk to us, when life is in Technicolor. Sunday was one of those days. My brother and I took my Dad to see the Raiders play the Denver Donkeys at Invesco (still Mile High to those of us who are old enough to think that that kind of name for a stadium is as beautiful a thing as a 20 year old virgin) Field. The beer was cold; we were wearing Raider gear and were prepared for a drubbing at the hands of what, I thought, should have been a better team--God intervened. I'm not big on the concept of God, though there was a period of my life when the idea helped me sleep, but it's hard to describe what happened last Sunday without thinking of the divine. Perhaps we just slipped into that alternate universe that my doppelganger enjoys, where everything goes my way and chicks dig me. That the Raiders destroyed the Donkeys is an understatement. It was 28 to O after the first quarter. I didn't know whether to laugh, cry or strip my clothes off and run through the stadium shouting, "You fuckers have always sucked. You have never beaten us this bad. My brother, father and I deserve this moment." And, we do. We do deserve the occasional reprieve from the life that sucks the life out of us. As Blanche DuBois said, "sometimes, there's God, so suddenly". While it may be more than a little gay to quote Tennessee Williams to describe what happened at a football game, it just works. Somewhere, between the beers and the brats and the cigarettes and the chick fight we saw on the way out of the game, My brother, father and I felt that God had smiled, for one brief and everlasting moment, on our lives. Fuck the Broncos.

Livin' in the fatherland

When I was 15, my father cut his own thumb mostly off. He was putting incredibly tasteful wood paneling, in a diagonal pattern, on my bedroom wall. He slipped while cutting the paneling and nearly severed his thumb with an Exacto knife. I wasn't home, but my stepmother, brother and step siblings were. In total, there were four people, other than the man in question, who could have taken my dad to the hospital. He asked for a towel, wrapped his dangling thumb in it, and drove 10 miles to the local E.R. for treatment. This is my father. He's not one of those weird medical miracles who doesn't feel pain, he just doesn't want anyone's help when he does. And, while he was no monster of a parent, he naturally expected my brother and me to not bother him with trivialities like severe poison oak, burns, ingrown toenails so infected that I couldn't wear shoes, etc. That pissed me off as I child. I had friends whose parents would take them to the doctor for a cough and I sat at home for a whole day with a broken collar bone to see if it got better--it didn't.

My dad could pick my brother and me up at the same time, one in each arm, when we were in high school, all of his 5'8" bulging and reddening. He had a temper and was prone to threatening us that he would, "knock our heads through a goddamn wall". To his credit, he never did. He thumped us and smacked our heads on occasion and that was enough. He was less tame in dealing with others. As a kid, I never saw my dad take any amount of shit from anyone. Scratch that; I have yet to see it. About 10 years ago, after my first son was born, my 60 year old father chased one of his neighbors down the street for questioning the legality of our fireworks display. In short, he is not to be fucked with, but he will never go out of his way to fuck with you.

On the contrary, he is one of the most likable people anyone would ever meet. He has always been generous to a fault, incredibly funny and truly tolerant (if we leave off politics). I never left my house without money in my pocket when I lived with my dad, either because he gave it to me or because he never busted us for stealing his change out of the chicken bank on his dresser. My father was loving too. He was a traveling appliance salesman, so he was gone much of the time. Still, he would find a way to show up to baseball games, band concerts, etc. Once, when I was in Santa Barbara, an hour from where I grew up, attending summer camp and staying with my Grandmother, my dad showed up. He was coming back from Santa Maria on a trip and he found where I was. This was in the time before cell phones, so I know it was no small feat for him to find me, sitting with my friends at West Beach, eating lunch at camp. My dad came walking across the field in his suit and my heart leapt. I knew he didn't need to be there, he just wanted to see me. I was 10 years old at the time and I still see him, his 1978 white afro, his three piece brown suit with an open collar exposing a gold coin medallion necklace--he was cool and at the height of his "disco" Mike phase.

Now that he's getting older, my dad has slowed down. He lives in Denver and doesn't come out. A few years ago, he had a heart attack. Naturally, he refused to call an ambulance and drove himself to the hospital, or should I say two hospitals. The first one had no emergency room, so he drove to another one that did have an E.R., but no free parking. Needless to say, he drove a block away, parked the car and staggered into the lobby where a flabbergasted doctor said, "You're having a heart attack" to which my father replied, "I know." Some things never change.

My brother and I are going to see him in a week or two and I'm excited. We're taking him to the Raider-v-Bronco game. My brother and dad haven't seen each other for a year or two, so it will be good. For my part, I'm going because of that day in Santa Barbara, because he showed up to my public defense of my dissertation, because he called me twice on Sunday to rub in the fact that he was killing me in our fantasy football league, because I love you, Dad.

The Gang's All High

Busby Berkeley's The Gang's All Here (1939) is as strange, wonderful and psychoactive as any film ever made. I showed it today in my Intro course and the kids reacted as they always do--technicolor. I sat there with my Cinerama smile watching them watching Berkeley at his whisky fueled, kaleidoscopic maddest. This film should not work. It has a razor thin plot, some of the worst acting in Hollywood history and Alice Faye sings the same song 5 times. None of this matters. The minute the first 6 foot banana comes out and Carmen Miranda starts to dance in her 8 inch heels, all is forgiven. The overhead shot of the aforementioned bananas being lowered onto a group of girls holding gigantic strawberries over their crotches is as filthy and delightful as any shot in any movie. And the film goes on, much like that, for nearly two hours.
It's a back stage musical, so I think my students are more likely to accept all the singing, as am I. I've never really liked the walking down the street, breaking into song MGM bullshit anyway. Not that there's anything realistic about Berkeley's film except the reason for the singing. The final scene in the movie is more surreal, and a lot more fun to watch, than Un Chien Andalou and nobody gets her eye cut in half. The "Polka Dot Polka", which opens with young children singing with dubbed soprano and deep bass, builds to an amazing Berkeley sound stage piece utilizing neon rings, insane costumes and, I kid you not, a kaleidoscopic shot of women dancing. It's celluloid LSD. The film ends with disembodied heads singing Alice Faye's favorite song one last time on a field of blue. And everyone in the audience claps, every time.
Why Berkeley was not a more prolific director is understandable; he was an insane drunk. Still, he left us with an amazing body of work and reminds me, every time I watch this movie, that film is sometimes best when watched with your mouth open. That 18 year old kids like it too restores my faith in humanity.

Bar Mitzvah

That Dylan Thomas was not young when he wrote "Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night" is a mystery. As I sit at the ripe age of 43, I am already pretty sure I won't be raging "against the dying of the light". I went to my son's friend Erich's Bar Mitzvah last night, with my wife and son. It was a beautiful service, and it made me long for the sense of belonging that all Jewish celebrations evoke. After the service, there was a lovely cocktail hour (I made friends with a bottle of Woodford Reserve) for the adults, while the kids partied in the "kid room". At some point, I wandered over that way to see what the "kids" were up to. I stood at the door and watched my 14 year old boy work a group of girls, including some of the staff, like a seasoned pro, and I realized that I wasn't there for Erich's Bar Mitzvah--I was there for Riley's.

My son grew up last night in my mind, and I doubt there is any going back. I am the sentimental type (I cry during commercials), so the night was a bit tough. Riley is my oldest and his coming into manhood is a bit of a wake-up call. I've seen it coming for some time as the child is blessed with hair in all the right places (for now, boy) a four-thousand dollar, orthodontic smile and a quick wit. He was charming enough to ask the 18 year old bimbo, who had been hired to make the party fun, if she was a striper--and she smiled. As the night wore one, I saw him buzz from one flower to the next, and I began to wonder how long it will be before I get a call from some unhappy father regarding Riley's nocturnal activities. It's not a question of "if", but "when". Then I thought of my perfect "o-k-ness" with the whole thing. Riley's day in the sun is coming and mine is going. Vonnegut would say, "so it goes" and he'd be right.

I spoke to my dad this morning, to check in, to let him know I care. I don't sense any "rage" at the dying of his light. He's 71 and has had a good life. I have yet to meet someone of that age who had any real objection to the inevitable night descending on them, and I doubt I ever will. Riley grows up, I grow down and there's a quiet beauty in that. I will, with any luck, get to see many more milestones in both my kids' lives and I look forward to them all. The feeling that the world will go on, that some part of you will go with it is a comfort and I haven't had any real rage for a long time anyway. Mazel Tov.

Male and Female

I screened the 1919, Cecil B. DeMille directed Male and Female today in my Intro to Film course. Two days a week I get to teach an extension class for our local community college. Two days a week I get to use my graduate school education and, you guessed it, two days a week I love me as a teacher. I get excited about films. Some people look at a cathedral, a painting, a mountain and it fills them with a sense of the divine, a belief that we are not alone, that the dead speak. For me, it's film. I showed a movie made 91 years ago to a room full of people under the age of 25 and the laughed, cried and, fuckin' a Billy, they clapped at the end. They liked it and I felt like there was hope.
I get hopeful and excited at the start of every school year. My high school kids are just as fun and excited as my film students. We covered the first chapter of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter today, and no question I could think of went unanswered. It was clear that at least two kids in every class had actually read the book--that's not bad. The rest were at least decent enough to pretend they had read it, which I think is a positive. I've decided that my job keeps me from getting depressed. When a city block explodes in San Bruno, when truly retarded people when primary elections, when my wife hates me or I can't take a shit, I have a room full of kids who are willing to at least try to figure out Hawthorne's syntax, even though they are taking 5 other hard classes. There is hope in this work. There is beauty in 90 year old images of a naked Gloria Swanson getting into a bathtub. I feel lucky today.