Brother, Can You Spare Some Change? (Inauguration Part Two of Two)

Monday, January 19 – Martin Luther King Day.  We woke up to snow flurries.  I had two things I wanted to do this day.  One, go to the Martin Luther King Memorial, one of the three thousand things I missed when I was here November 2007.  The second was go to Howard University where Spike Lee was giving a free all-day symposium.  Natalie killed them both and not without reason.  She didn’t want to be anywhere near the National Mall knowing anybody who would be in town for the Inauguration would be here by now and they’d all be trying to squeeze in all the attractions in the two or three days they’d be in town.  The Martin Luther King Memorial on Martin Luther King Day on the eve of the Inauguration of the first black President… it’s kind of a no-brainer.  As far as Spike Lee goes… we’ll I’m told Howard University is in the hood.  Most of the hoods I am used to have pawn shops and cash advance stores but not universities.  Must be some hood.  I don’t fight her on this because I have seen Spike Lee lecture twice before, have his signature on his Making Of Malcolm X book and Natalie let me drag her across town just so I could get my picture taken on the steps from the ending of The Exorcist the last time I was here.  Never call her a Killjoy.

Natalie has to make a judgment call because sometimes, left to my own devices I am like a small child. One of us has to be the adult.  The last time we were in DC she put me on a tour bus for the day before she left for her conference so I could see the sites.  She showed me where to buy my ticket and and like a child on his first day put me in a seat stepped outside as I sat there minding my business in my winter coat with a small map in my pocket and all my money in my front pocket so nobody could steal it.  A moment she later she climbed back on the bus and asked:

NATALIE: Have you ever been on a bus before?

JIM: No.  I’ve been in a bus.

George Carlin is a God.

NATALIE: Shut up.  Seriously.

JIM: A school bus.

NATALIE:  I’m coming with you.

She goes outside buys another ticket and escorted me to the stop to make sure I wouldn’t get lost.

Once she fell asleep letting me eat Stephen Colbert’s Americone Dream ice cream from the container.  She woke up to find me on the couch complaining about my stomach.

NATALIE: Did you eat something that disagreed with you?

JIM: I ate that ice cream.

She finds the empty container on the end table

NATALIE: Jim, did you eat this whole thing?

JIM: Yeah.

NATALIE: Are you crazy?  That’s like two thousand calories.  What were you thinking?

JIM: But it had waffle cone in it.  What was I supposed to do?  There was waffle cone, that sugary delicious temptress.

We decide to take it easy and conserve our strength.  We start with lunch at the Open City Cafe.  One of the things I like about big cities is the diversity of minorities, something you don’t see in small towns in the south.  I smile as the girl at the table next to us announces to her girlfriends, “Welcome to the final day of the Bush administration.”  One of the benefits of having a significant other is being able to eat of their plate.  It’s one of those perks nobody talks about but it’s nice to have someone carve a chunk off their omelet and push it to the side specifically for you.  We pass by several street vendors, all with bootleg Obama merchandise.  It’s like someone forgot to lock the gate at the flea market and all these vendors escaped into the wild.  My brother requested three hats for his family which I find fairly easy.  Some things like the pimped-hat Obama with phrase “The World Is Mine” (from Scarface) or Obama in a Kangol hat with the Run DMC font that reads “We Run DC” kills me just a little inside.  What should be the death blow is a pink shirt with Obama’s face completely bedazzled in shiny beads and I immediately think, “that may be the tackiest thing I have ever seen outside Rip Taylor’s house,” and then think of my friend Jon’s ten-year-old daughter Elizabeth who, like her stepmother, has a severe Commander-In-Chief crush.  I consider buying it for her and the guy tells me it’s twenty-four dollars and I keep moving.  I am not a fan of bootleg stuff.  Don’t ask me why.  Natalie buys her mother Obama mock nine dollar bills (don’t ask me why nine dollars) because they’re kitschy and her mom likes kitschy.  We go to Union Station where where are people lined up to get their picture taken with cardboard Obama.

We buy a bunch more stuff at the B Dalton’s.  The Time Person Of The Year issue.  Newspapers.  Whatever.  I buy Yuri an Obama t-shirt by Alex Ross, the greatest comic illustrator alive at Fantom Comics.

  

And just because I can be a jerk these are some other pieces he did for The Village Voice which I assume is a fairly left periodical.  I don’t know his politics or if he’s just a hired gun but in his non-comic stuff seems like a cross between Norman Rockwell and Che Guevera.

   

 

People are bombarding the clerk about getting the Spider-Man issue with Obama on the cover that somehow my pusher Ray didn’t have for me.  What’s up with that?

And this is here because it’s just strikes me as funny.  I picture ten minutes later Rush Limbaugh has a horrible accident, loses his hair and reveals himself as Obama nemesis Lex Luthor.

Anyway, where was I?  Oh, we decide to go see Frost/Nixon which is excellent.  On the way there I feel something crunch under my feet and stop to see what I stepped in.  Natalie tells me that would be ice and it gets kinds of slick.  It’s been almost twenty years since I have seen snow and it catches me off guard.  The theatre was probably the best I have ever been in.  One enormous house, a giant curved screen and I got to sit in the balcony which was a first for me.

  

We left with a quest to find a Ben & Jerry’s to buy a pint of their Obama bandwagon flavor, Yes Pecan.

No luck (although Natalie would find some in Gainesville and bring it home as a surprise for me).  We go home to find an excellent dinner made by former cook-turner-lawyer turned host Jamey Cowden.  Tomorrow is the Inauguration.

Inauguration Day.  Everything federal in DC is close.  We wake up to leave the apartment by 7:00a.  With the wind-chill it’s twelve degrees.  We’re all packed for any emergency.  Hats, gloves, scarfs, cash, check cards, credit cards, subway passes, maps from the newspaper of security checkpoints, cameras, extra batteries, bags of almonds and beef jerky, tissues and I have two ponchos in my back pocket.  We get to the elevator and there is a sign that reads, “If you want to walk to Inauguration with neighbors, meet us in the lobby at 8:00a.”  Someone has vandalized the sign in Sharpie with the words, “If you leave at 8:00a you’ll never make it.”

We start walking.  The plan is to avoid the Metro because everyone who doesn’t know what they’re doing will be in that concrete tube.  We have several miles to walk.  I find a trick regardless of the weather is always wear two pairs of socks for extra cushion and avoiding the bleeding heels I got from all the walking last time I was here.  On the street, everyone looks like they are wearing all the clothes they own.  Wrapped in this many clothes everyone looks like an idiot when they run across intersections.  A woman exits her apartment with her dog and asks me to save her a spot.  I tell her to look for me… I’ll be the black guy in the hat on the left.  A girl in a miniskirt and three-inch spike heels is walking in front of us and Natalie looks at me and says, “Amateur.  I’d rather be warm than cute.  Those shoes aren’t going to worth a damn after the second mile and in the grass of the mall.”

We decide if you don’t have tickets you won’t be watching anything with the naked eye.  The plan is to find a good place and watch it from one of the thirty jumbotrons strategically placed throughout the mall.  We decide the Lincoln Memorial is the furthest point and will probably have the least amount of people.  The idea of watching the first black President get inaugurated from the foot of Great Emancipator is kinda cool.  We get there and we’re right.  We take some seats along a chain link fence.  Kristina and Jamey go to find some hot dogs and food.  Natalie requests a hot dog with ketchup, mustard and relish ignoring the fact someone has to bring this to her in twelve degree weather.

I don’t like hot drinks so I request a Coke.  This is what God does to you for being so stupid to order a Coke when it’s twelve degrees.

It boggles the mind to think of the logistics of getting through all the clothes to use the Porta-Potty.  The picture on the jumbotron was lacking.  Clearly not high-def or as nice as the world’s smallest jumbotron I own at home made by the good people at Sony.

Even celebrities like Elmo came all the way from Sesame Street.

Some guy sits next to me and tells me he’s glad he talked his teenage daughters into wearing hats?  I ask why wouldn’t they want to wear hats.  “Their hair,” he responds.  Jamey gets the idea we should be closer.  He says we don’t have to come but he wants to be in the thick of it.  In the event it’s a bad idea we can always come back.  The area has started to fill but there is still lots of space.  We migrate forward.  I pass a woman with a Scottish flag sewed on her jacket with a sign that reads “Scotland For Obama.”  As the crowds get thicker, you can see grown people moving through the masses holding onto the hands and jackets of the person in front of them.  Occasionally a group of four will pause and another larger group passes holding hands like children on a field trip.  The buddy system works pretty well even when you’re thirty-seven.

We get to the World War II Memorial.  What used to be a fountain in the center is drained and filled with people who also squeeze themselves on the walls of the structure.

 

In the memorial and within all the people the wind-chill is cut down substantially.  I meet a woman standing next to me who drove in last night from one of the Carolinas.  She had Obama earrings and it makes me wonder how many Reagan or Clinton earrings anybody would have ever bought.

The ceremony starts.  Two million people shut up and we’re all staring giant televisions.  Comments are made as people are brought out.  Jimmy Carter gets cheers.  My father would have liked that.  Michelle Obama appears and man in the back shouts, “I love you, Michelle!”  Dick Cheney who apparently threw is back out moving boxes is pushed out in wheelchair looking ominously like Mr Potter from It’s A Wonderful Life.  I’m with DL Hughley in wondering what kind of multimillionaire moves his own boxes?  I still say they were probably stuffed with the ballots from the 2000 election.

The jumbotron pans over the seemingly never-ending crowd and my first reaction is, “look at all those idiots,” having forgotten I am standing there in this surreal moment and then I see the helicopter fly overhead and remember I am one of the idiots.  George W Bush appears and pockets of the crowd “boo” him.  This is the one thing everybody asks me and I have to say it seemed much smaller than they made it seemed on television but you can’t put two million people together and expect them all to respect the office.  A woman shouts, “Have some respect… he’s still our President for… twenty three more minutes.”

Barack Obama appears to overwhelming cheering.  We’re told to take our seats and the crowds bursts into laughter since we’ve been standing for the better part of three hours.  Aretha Franklin appears for the national anthem and there is a universal, “What the hell is she wearing?’ from the crowd.  Natalie tells me these people obviously haven’t spent a lot of time in black churches.  The one thing I learned is black women like big hats and have no problem wearing lots of fur… then again, I think black women live without the fear of having some twenty-year old college vegan throwing paint on their coats because they’re vegans, not stupid.

The Vice-Presidential Inauguration happens and I hope under my breath that Crazy Joe doesn’t do anything stupid.  The Presidential Inauguration happens slightly after noon and people, including myself, start wondering is this legit.  Several outlets reported the new President must be sworn in by noon.  Will someone get Yo Yo Ma off the frickin’ stage?

Justice John Roberts swears in Barack Obama in as the 44th President of the United States and the crowd goes wild.

     

People I don’t know hugged me.  Natalie kissed me.  And like that we, America, had it’s first African American President and the Bush Administration ended.  When we first got to DC the Super Shuttle driver was listening to talk radio and his guest was an older civil rights activist and when asked his opinion on the day he said he’d been working on the Barack Obama campaign since 1932.  That made me smile and it was all I could think about as we walked back home.  By the end of the day we’d walked seven miles.  We skipped the parade (which we were told you could do one or the other but not to attempt both).  We watched it from a couch and ate chili dogs and didn’t regret a moment of it.

We woke up the next day at 4:00a to be downstairs for the shuttle at 5:05a.  Kristina and Jamey, the gracious hosts they are, woke too see us off.  As soon as we were on the plane, Natalie and I were done with the Inauguration and ready for America to return to business as usual.  I’m not one of the people who thinks the the man who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the answer to all our hopes… he’s just a guy, but it doesn’t mean you can’t hope.  We had a Washington and a Lincoln and a Roosevelt so we’re due for another leader.  Someone who will inspire us.  Someone who reminds us that America is an ideal and it’s okay to be idealistic, the audacity of hoping and all that.  I feel good about things.  It’s nice to see so many different types of people coming together for a common cause.  Someone told me when the Election Night Celebration was held in Chicago, it could have been disastrous had Obama lost and there were 400,000 angry people in one place.  I told him, “You know what, you would have had 400,000 white, black, Latino, Jewish, Middle-Easterns and Asians rioting together and brother, that’s progress.  It feels good that I have a President that wants his Blackberry so he can keep in touch and knows what Rush Limbaugh is saying about him.  A President that knows the Earth isn’t flat and science shouldn’t stop because it makes you uncomfortable.  A President that isn’t afraid to say in an Inauguration address that “special rights” for gay people are the same rights all of us already have.  I like seeing the American flag waved in other countries and it not be on fire.

I haven’t felt that way in a long time.  America… I missed you.  It’s been a long time.  You look good.

Inauguration 2009 Map

Obamapalooza (Inauguration Part One Of Two)

Our plane touched down in Baltimore around 11:00a on Saturday.  Natalie’s plan is to get a shuttle that will take us to the train that will take us to Washington DC.  At the AmTrak station we’re greeted by cab drivers telling us what the woman behind the window will confirm a few minutes later: all seats into Washington are sold until 6:00p.  Natalie attempts to buy a ticket for Wednesday coming back to the airport.  The woman behind the window tells her every ticket before 6:00p is sold for the rest of the week.

Back to the bus.  The bus takes us to the airport and we get tickets on the Super Shuttle which will take us to DC.  Natalie is smart and buys tickets for Wednesday now.  It’s an hour ride through DC.  Periodically we receive phone calls from our host, Kristina, checking our ETA and asking what we want for lunch.  They want Indian but since I have never had Indian Natalie plays it safe and they get Thai which is pretty much like Chinese with more peanutty flavor.

Kristina lives with her fiance Jamey.  Kristina looks like this:

Jamey looks something like this:

My bad.  That’s Ethan Hawke.  Jamey actually looks like this:

Crap.  I keep doing that.  That’s Ethan Hawke, again.

This is Jamey.  Which is pretty much what I think Ethan Hawke would look like if he lived in a one-bedroom apartment in DC and was picking out sweatshirts for the next day.  Except Jamey looks like he showers and isn’t one bad day from being homeless which is what Ethan Hawke always looks like to me.  That, and Jamey would never be mean to Uma Thurman.

They’re both attorneys and know Natalie from her college days at American Law when she lived in DC.  Their apartment is in a renovated hotel complete with doorman (okay, not so much a doorman like Ralph on The Jeffersons as much as a person who sits behind a desk and hands you your mail when you ask for it).  It is one bedroom with every corner maximized Ikea-style for space and decorated in early American primate adding to Kristina’s surely unhealthy monkey obsession.

The kitchen can fit two people unless someone decides to open the oven or the refrigerator in which case someone has to step outside.  Natalie’s first words when she enters are, “Wow… this place is much bigger than your last place.”

I realize in DC my shitbox of a townhouse would be the Playboy Mansion.  Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

We relax and enjoy our food.  Natalie and Kristina get caught up.  I thaw and watch Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer on Cinemax, which I have at the house and have never watched all the way through.  I make a mental note to throw it out when I get home.  Common sense says you shouldn’t trust anyone who wears a metal mask, a cloak in 2009 and has the last name “Doom.”  Blonde Jessica Alba creeps me out.

Sunday is the concert.  Kristina makes us a large breakfast and we develop our plan of attack.  The concert starts at 2:30p, no ticket necessary.  Performing are Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Beyonce Knowles, Shakira, Stevie Wonder, Usher, U2, Cheryl Crow and whoever the hell Josh Groban is.  There are special appearances by Denzel Washington, Jack Black, Laura Linney, George Lopez, Halle Berry, Jamie Foxx, Samuel L Jackson and Kal Penn… yes, Kal Penn.  The audience collectively shouts “Kumar!” when he appears and wonders how he got this gig.  Seriously, he’s biggest claims to fame are playing a stoner, replacing Ryan Reynolds in the Van Wilder sequel that doesn’t have Van Wilder in it and starring has Henchman #2 in Superman Returns where he has no dialogue.  I wonder what are the chances of Samuel L Jackson dropping an F-Bomb.  Natalie is convinced the concert is a dry run for the inauguration.  She would be right.

We brave the cold and march to the Metro, DC’s subway system.  it’s a little crowded but not too bad.  All the Metro cards have Barack Obama’s and Inauguration information.  DC does this neat thing and shows commercials on the tunnel walls so for a few seconds you see a Target ad or a trailer for Coraline.  We exit the Metro and when we’re streetside we merge with a mass of people.  Thousands.  All moving in one direction.  I am reminded of those scenes in War Of The Worlds (2005) where thousands of displaced Americans are migrating somewhere.  There, it was for safety.  Here, it was for Beyonce.

On every intersection is a humvee and at least two National Guardsmen. On occasion I would see a humvee parked on a manhole and know that manhole wasn’t welded close (a typical practice when a President is in the open).  Any place that didn’t have soldiers, had a police presence.

Natalie doesn’t like cops.  This comes from her interaction with cops as a protester, legal observer and general rabble-rouser.  I comment the police are very friendly and she comments, “That’s because nobody is protesting anything.”  And then we come across this:

  

My favorite sign was the reverse side of the white one which read “Real Change Comes With Jesus, Not Obama.”  Kristina ran into the crowd to shout obscenities at them.  I just dismissed them as assholes and reigned her in so we could keep moving.  I’m a black guy… if I yelled at everything that pissed me off I’d be as annoying as William Donahue and unable to accept the fact that not everybody is going to like me and you convert them by being nice, doing the Christian thing and turning the other cheek and not calling them douches.

The concert was to be performed in the foot of the Lincoln Memorial.  There are four security checkpoints each checking two people at a time.  Again, there are thousands of us.  We’re in line for an hour when an ambulance siren makes us make room so they can pass.  We step to the sides to clear the street, maybe a hundred of us, an as soon as the ambulance passes everyone behind us fills the open space leaving us on the sidewalk.  Nobody picks a fight.  People just ease their way back into the crowd.

The girl in front of me won’t stop talking about Beyonce.  She won’t shut up.  To make matters worse, some of the people she’s with are behind us so her conversations are shouted through us.  Kristina asks how did we get saddled with the annoying and unattractive people?  This excludes Miss Arlington who was behind us, a very attractive young woman who felt the need to wear her sash and tiara.

Imagine the above picture with a snow jacket and boots (keeping the sash and tiara) and you get the idea.  I imagine she was trying to get hit on (or just generally attract attention) which is difficult in scarf, parka and some boots Quinn The Eskimo would’ve harpooned you for.  Nothing says, “I’m a hottie,” more than literally wearing a sign that said you won a beauty pageant and a tiara.  It also says, “I’m a little full of myself and very proud of being born pretty… would you like to see me perform “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” on the flute for the talent portion of the competition.”

I look down and see a woman’s Barack Obama sneakers and notice they have a Nike swish and are authentic Air Force Ones…

…and I’m a little sad to see the first black President marketed like a Batman movie…

…and even sadder that black people spend their money on complete bullshit.

We start talking about the performers and Natalie is confident they’ll end with Beyonce.

JIM: I doubt it.

NATALIE: What’s a better closer than Beyonce?  Really, what do you follow that with?

JIM: Bruce Springsteen.  “Born In The USA.”

NATALIE: I didn’t think about that.

JIM: John Mellencamp.  “Pink Houses.”

NATALIE: Which one is that?

JIM: (Singing) “Ain’t that America, you and me?  Ain’t that America, something to see, baby?  Ain’t that America, home of the free… Little Pink Houses for you and me.”

NATALIE: Yeah.  Maybe.

JIM: Well, I sure don’t want to see her at the foot of the Great Emancipator singing “Upgrade U” to the future President.

Then this happens:

Washington DC has very limited airspace.  Three times I have seen helicopters flying low in DC and twice it was this copter.  That is Marine One, the President’s helicopter heading in the direction of the Lincoln Memorial.

After an hour or so in line I can hear Denzel Washington speaking.  Kristina starts freaking out because that’s her future husband… keep in mind, she already has one fiance.  I think she just likes to exercise the fantasy.

The crowd starts to get anxious and people from the front of the line begin moving in the wrong direction.  Someone says the gates are closed.  I am not moving until someone in a uniform tells me this.  A moment later two National Guardsmen walk the line telling us they’ve reached maximum capacity and we have to watch the show from one of the thirty jumbotrons.  The closest is at the Washington Monument.  Jumbotrons aren’t too bad because I have the world’s smallest jumbotron made by the good people at Sony and enjoy it very much.  I call my friend Yuri and tell him they’re testing the jumbotrons with Halo 3.  He screams like an eight year old girl.  None of this is true but I love messing with his head.

A few hundred of us start moving in the direction of the monument which is pretty easy to find.  We cross the small hill the monument sits on to find this:

  

Kids started climbing trees and the Army told them they’d have to get down.  After awhile it was pointless and they let them stay.  I am pretty sure the obvious snipers on the surrounding rooftops kept an eye on them.

  

Granted, the ground was frozen but people insisted on standing which is fine if you’re six foot.  I am not.  Natalie is even shorter.  She complained about what inconsiderate bastards tall people are.  I told her she’s preaching to the choir.  I am little surprised at the number of people who brought small children.  Natalie and I decided if our kids are small enough and needed to be carried there is no way I would have them out in 30 degree weather.

   

Next to Natalie is Kristina in her red hat.  She explained the significance of the red hat which is she’d easy to find in a crowd.  She was right in that we lost her a few times only to find her thirty seconds later because of her red hat.  This is also Natalie’s theory in luggage which is never buy black, gray or navy luggage.  Always buy something shockingly ugly that you can live with.  Natalie’s luggage is all red and green.  She’s is in a constant quest for something in a paisley.  She draws the line at floral prints but admires people able to pull it off.

We watched the concert with the Washington Monument in the background with half a million of our closest friends.  There is something about 500,000 people singing “Pink Houses” or “This Land Is Your Land” that send a little chill through your spine. My favorite line was George Lopez asking, “How many of you are from out of town?  Well, you’re home now.”  Michelle Malkin would later call the event a Kumbaya love fest and I will call Michelle Malkin a mean, nasty bitch.  This is that “Audacity Of Hope” Obama was talking about.

Then the concert ended and a half million people decided to leave, at once, and find something to eat.

The further we walked the more the crowd thinned and eventually found Mark & Orlando’s which must have just opened for the evening since we were the first ones in the door.  We wanted burgers and a beer.  I got the fanciest cheesesteak sandwich I have ever eaten and Natalie ordered Crème brûlée in her effort to expose me to things finer than peanut butter ice cream.  We got home and decided Monday would be a day of rest to reserve our strength for Tuesday.

Part Two will appear Friday January 30.

Twenty Things You Can Be Pretty Sure Won’t Happen In An Obama Administration

- President Obama always enters with a beat box rendition of “Hail To The Chief” performed by Doug E Fresh (“Six minutes… six minutes… six minutes and Barack you’re on…”).

- “In God We Trust” on currency replaced with, “America: Thursday Night Ladies Drink Free.”

- Refers to Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and Administrator of the EPA Lisa Jackson as his “Cabinet Bitches.”

- Cadillac One gets spinning rims on twenty-twos.

- Three words: Press Secretary Madea.

- Consistently refers to Michelle Obama as his “Boo” and Sasha and Malia as his “Shorties.”

- All addresses exclusively appear on BET between midnight and 4:00a as not to interrupt episodes of Sister, Sister and Lil Kim: Countdown To Lockdown. Video Soul may be preempted.

- Unlike George W Bush, Obama will not refer to members of the White House Press Corp with nicknames like “Cowboy” and “Nubby” but instead refer to them with dignity using their complete name, media affiliation and a personal message as in: “David Gregory, Meet The Press… holla at ya boy.”

- Tupac Shakur’s birthday made into a national holiday.

- National Anthem replaced with “September” by Earth, Wind and Fire.

- Presidential emblem and furniture in the Oval Office replaced with shag white carpet, black furniture and a large golden spinning globe with LED lights repeating the phrase, “The World Is Mine.”

- All Secret Service replaced by Jim Brown, Jim Kelly, Richard Roundtree and Fred Williamson.

- All appearances introduced by Michael Buffer and preceded by the Barack Obama Dancers.

- USS Ronald Reagan renamed the USS Quiet Storm.

- MC Hammer, TLC and Little Richard all qualify for a government bailout.

- Air Force One renamed Soul Plane One and when said aloud must always be bellowed… Don Cornelius-style with an emphasis on the word “soul” that lasts a minimum of fifteen seconds.

- Hires Marla Gibbs to be the White House maid because he likes her sass. If she is unavailable he’ll accept Gretchen Kraus from Benson.

- The White House appears on MTV Cribs.

- All of his suits will be pinstripes in various shades of mustard, purple and red from the Steve Harvey Collection.

- The new White House dog is a spike-collared pit bull named Debo. He’s never chained and allowed to run freely on the south lawn barking at tourists and chasing the President’s helicopter, Marine One.

Brave New World

My father had very little use for history. He seldom reminisced but would be happy to talk about his past if you asked him. He wasn’t one of those guys who attended the Veterans Of Foreign Wars and had no need for them. Seriously, to be the veteran of a domestic war you’d have to be over one hundred and sixty years old. When I was a boy, he kept his Army dress uniform in my closet and I used to open the door and stare at the green jacket and with the mind of ten-year old think of the places it’d been over the last forty years. One day I came home and it was gone. My father needed closet space. He didn’t need a forty year old jacket. He threw it out. When I think about it, I probably only have about a dozen stories about my father from before I was born. I’ve never met any of his friends. The oldest picture I ever saw of him was when he enlisted for World War II when he was seventeen. My father was a man who lived in the present.

Pay attention here because you’ll never hear me say this: In this respect, I hope I am never like my father.

When you think of the historical events you’ve witnessed you can always remember where you were. In 1986 was in eighth grade and there was a hush among teachers and finally someone told us the space
shuttle had exploded. In 2001 I was driving down 17^th Street about to cross Pine on my way to work when Gary Dell’Abate interrupted Howard Stern to tell him the World Trade Center was on fire and a moment later, that it’d been hit by a commercial plane.

The thing about history is you never know when it’ll happen. It just does and you bear witness.

Except now. Someone has given me a place, date and time and essentially said if you are there, you’ll be a part of history. People like to toss around the phrase "once in a lifetime" but on January 20, 2009, it applies.

My father lived in Washington DC during the Martin Luther King March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He didn’t attend the march. I am not sure why but I’ll bet crowds had something to do with it and being able to watch it better on television (which was his same argument for sporting events). Had my father, who died in 1999 three weeks before the millennium, been alive today he’d be eighty-three and probably think I was insane for going to what’s expected to be the largest crowd to attend an inauguration in history.

For me, being black in America always felt illegitimate. Our accomplishments ignored. Our tribulations belittled. Our history being compressed into one month of slavery, a bus boycott and MLK. Political Correctness caused people to say things without understanding what they meant which, while polite, is meaningless.

When I was ten I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker. My father talked me out of this because black people don’t get to be film directors. I told this story to my friend Kendra and there was such sorrow in her voice like someone broken her heart and puzzled, I didn’t know why it brought that reaction.

"That’s the most depressing thing I think I have heard a parent doing out of love," she said.

I responded, "What are you talking about? My father didn’t want to see me hurt."

She looked at me like she knew something I didn’t and said, "You believed your father and you trusted him and crushed your dream. How many people decide what they want to be at ten and still want to be that twenty-five years later? Has your father ever met you?"

I never saw it like that. I always thought of it as my father not wanting me to be disappointed. He was protecting me. In reality what he was doing was exercising what he had learned in his life. There were places black people were welcomed and places where they weren’t. He used to tell me, "It doesn’t matter how many black people are on the football field, the real power is how many are in the office."

Years later I had a heated discussion with my friend Jessica on if her daughter decided said she wanted to be the President of the United States what her answer would be. Jessica would encourage her and tell her anything was possible. I would tell my child it was unlikely it would happen. Jessica was appalled at my attitude. I think one of the differences between the way white and black people view America is to white people, anything is possible, it just hasn’t happened yet. To black people, there are things that just won’t happen.

Watching the election results the common phrase heard was, "I never thought I would see this in my lifetime." I never saw person say that. It wasn’t that they didn’t think it, it just wasn’t on the forefront of they’re mind to say it. How sad is it that I have said that about the same thing several times in the past few years. I lost a bet I made a year ago that neither Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama would get the Democratic Nomination because I viewed it as party suicide. That at thirty-six I probably have another good forty-five to fifty years on this planet and I didn’t think I would see this in my lifetime. It’s how little faith I had in the America and if I felt that way at thirty-six, what does that say about us?

Quite honestly America, I didn’t think you had it in you.

I came home when I was young and asked my father if Martin Luther King cheated on his wife. Some kid at school had told me that. My father told me America will do their best to dismantle powerful black people. Make their accomplishments seem smaller. Ruin their reputations. He may have had affairs but that doesn’t take away from what he did do. For the few things my father got wrong, I’m always amazed at the things he got right. Watching candidates belittle community organizing knowing the backbone of their campaign is run by volunteers. Questioning Obama’s citizenship, parentage and my personal favorite, accusing him of murder to garner sympathy votes when he’s ten points ahead in the polls. That black people will vote for a candidate just because he’s black and somehow that’s different than whites not voting for a candidate because they’re black (see the Bradley Effect). Claiming no one knows who he really is after he’s written two books, aired an infomercial on seven networks, participated in twenty-seven debates and ran a two year campaign.

But that was then and this is now.

I live in a different America. An America where grass root campaigning works. Where the Bradley Effect has been replaced by the Obama Effect. Where an African-American candidate can not only win, but double his opponents Electoral votes. Where people stopped being apathetic and created the largest voter turnout since 1968. Where states with few minorities that vote traditionally Republican, voted Democrat.

This isn’t about winners and losers. This is about we aren’t who we thought we were and maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe we’re capable of more than we are. And if this isn’t the right man, we know when he does come he won’t be cast aside because he doesn’t match what has come before. We had Roosevelts and Lincolns and we’re due for another.

So in the days to come, the months and years to come, when you see the pictures of the people who migrated to the Washington DC mall, most of them for the first time, know Natalie and I are standing somewhere in there. That we went to be a part of history and I when my grandchildren are telling me what they learned in school I can tell them I was there. That their grandmother and I stood on that frozen mall forty-five years after another African-American changed the world and watched it happen again.

And when they ask me if they can someday be the President of the United States I can tell them, with absolute certainty, "Yes you can."

Party Like It’s Your Birthday

I’m feeling pretty good right about now.

This also happened a few years ago in something I called "The Weekend Of Jim."  It was one specific weekend that culminated in my birthday (which, for twenty years I have never failed to take a vacation day with today breaking that tradition), the Martin Luther King holiday (with my birthday giving me a four day weekend), getting my tax return, receiving my bonus check, paying my truck off and every single other debt I had.

Hard act to follow.

Well yesterday was another series of layoffs at work, the third in the eighteen months I have been here.  Luckily I wasn’t one of them.  Then I came home to find an email from a man I’ll refer to as Johnny T (mostly because his last name starts with "Tch" and I’ll just butcher it if I go any further).  I met him a few months ago in Seattle at a wedding and found out he’s a TV writer.  I told him I dabble in some writing and if he’d be interested in looking at something and giving me some advice and he said he’d be glad to.  Now I think people in film, much like people in music, doctors and lawyers have occupations where total strangers are always asking them for something.

Hey counselor, is it considered grand theft is you’re stealing your own car back from an impound lot?

Hey doc, my kids get chest colds so I give them a teaspoon of Vicks Vapor rub with sugar and have them eat it.  Is that going to be a problem? *

Hey Simon Cowell, my sixteen year old son and his friends have band and they’re really, really good.  A cross between Maroon 5 and Color Me Badd.  Will you listen to their demo tape?

And then there’s me.

Hey John.  I know you’re at your friends wedding and getting your drink on and you’ve known me for (looks at watch) six minutes but will you read my screenplay?

I’m sure that happens to people a lot and I always feel awkward asking favors of people I don’t know.  What’s worse, I’ve seen American Idol and I am sure there are a lot of shitty demo tapes and screenplays out there (I once wrote my only piece of fan fiction was a Superman screenplay when I had writers block and someone pitched me a sequel that involved Superman meeting Jesus Christ).  I hate to be one of those people.  So when the email came back I cringed a little and then I saw this sentence:

"It’s great!  I had no idea what to expect, and I was honestly really impressed.  It’s a fun read and it’s got great dialogue and very cool action."

I’ve heard that before but honestly, sometimes trusting your friends, even the honest ones, is like trusting your mom.  She’s never going to tell you you’re short and fat and that’s why Amy Hunt won’t go out with you.  And they’re are people I trust more than others.  The point here being this came from a professional writer.  Let me reiterate, someone who gets paid to write words said this.

And I am feeling pretty good right about now.

He made some suggestions and all of them valid.  Yuri (one of my springboards) and I talked about it and Tony (my co-writer) and I will be a conversation as soon as I am back from DC.

Oh wait.  Did I not mention that?  Yeah, Natalie and I leaving for Orlando tonight.  Having a dinner with her folks and then heading to Washington DC for the Presidential Inauguration.  Expect photos of me and history.  Hopefully we’ll get into one of the many free concerts from the likes of Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Alicia Keys, U2, LL Cool J, John Legend, Stevie Wonder, Jay Z and Mary J Blige.  And Spike Lee is hosting a day long symposium at Howard University.  And Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Colin Powell and Steven Fucking Spielberg will be in town.

And Natalie, just so you know, I’ll be in the same city with Anne Hathaway, Beyonce Knowles and Jessica Alba… I bet you wish we didn’t make those "freebie lists" now.

Bow-chicka-wow-wow.

And my eleven year-old nephew called last night to take me to lunch and the movie of my choosing because today is my birthday and this weekend I’m a rock star.

* My father actually used to do this to us.  When I was old enough to read I found the words "Do Not Ingest" and seriously started to question my father’s methods.

Self-Destruct Sequence Initiated…

I had my first official meltdown last night.  It was bound to happen to one of us.

There are three things most women have planned from an early age.  This would be their homes, their children and their weddings.  I picture somewhere in female DNA the words “wedding,” “house” and “babies” have been programmed like they’re The Manchurian Candidate and as soon as their spoken a subroutine is executed that involves watching copious amounts of HGTV, finding names like Phinnaeus acceptable and subscribing to Brides magazines.  Did you know they only come in six month subscriptions… makes sense when you think about it (unless you’re Goldie Hawn).  This is the same DNA that allows them to instinctively wrap a towel around their naked bodies and secure it with one well-placed twist.  Have you ever seen a man wrap himself in a towel?   It’s quite sad.

Men, on the other hand, have very little criteria for any of these things.  I have lived in seven homes since I moved out of my parent’s house.  My main concern is always where my TV will go.  Everything else is secondary.  The exterior could have pink Nazi swastikas and I wouldn’t care… the TV is inside the house.  I only see the outside for thirty seconds getting to my car and thirty seconds nine hours later going to the front door.  I have never had any preconceived notions of what my kitchen will look like.  You’re talking to a guy that did his entire bathroom in white to make it resemble a motel bathroom so the framed Psycho poster would be funnier… right down to the transparent shower curtain.

My wedding.  I was hoping there would be a bride who spoke a language other than Russian and my biggest request is that I get to wear the tuxedo that Harrison Ford wore in Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom (which, for movie nerds, was also worn by Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca but at twelve I was too young to know that).

 

  

Babies?  I’d like for them not to have the name Phinnaeus.

There.  Those are my requests.  I am a simple man with simple pleasures.

So last night Natalie and I were reviewing the wedding budget and the numbers started coming in.  Understand, 95% of the work for the wedding has been done by her.  She’s made the phone calls, conducted interviews, signed the contracts.  I was given the tasks of guest favors, finding a DJ, a photographer and picking stuff to do for the honeymoon.  On occasion, my opinion was requested for colors or cake types and the all important food tasting (and for the record, you can wrap a possum in puff pastry and it’d be delicious).

The more numbers I saw, the more panicked I got.  Don’t get me wrong.  I know we have been hording money for months but there is something about me that likes looking into a bank account and seeing an obscene amount of money like when you buy a house and for forty-eight hours there is a few hundred thousand dollars in your bank account.  You know at the other end there is a house but part of you really likes seeing all those zeroes.

So the numbers start coming in and as quick as Natalie is rattling them off I am keying them into Microsoft Money and watching our savings account balance fall faster than Lindsay Lohan in Cancun on her birthday.

Flowers cost how much?

That’s for the cake?  Its eggs, flour and water.  If you take out the eggs its paste.

I don’t understand why I am buying people gifts at my wedding?  Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Why can’t I put Xbox games on the wedding registry?  I don’t even like toast.

These conversations came with Natalie explaining why it’s important that the font on the invitations match the font on the envelope and how worlds will collide if you use Liberty Bell stamps instead of Love stamps.  The sheer obscenity of a caterer to request a mandatory twenty percent gratuity (even if they suck) along with sales tax (and you know the bartender is still going to want a tip jar on the counter… well wanting and doing are two different things).

In her best attorney voice she tried to argue the point of tipping on an already established fee.  This is something I find pointless.  If someone asks a rate for my services and I say, “six hundred dollars,” then we shake hands, sign paperwork and I’ll see you at the wedding.  But apparently I am supposed to tip them on top of that. Keep in mind, this person is getting paid one hundred and fifty dollars an hour already.

The phrase, “That’s the way it’s done,” was said to me several times.

And then I snapped.  I wasn’t vocal or violent.  There was no outburst.  The exact opposite.  I just kinda shut down.

I don’t know what it was.  Maybe it had been building over the past few months.  I am a “Function over Form” man (as are most men) and weddings are the antithesis of form over function.  Maybe it was the surprise at just how much weddings cost.  Maybe it was the amount of people who in conversations at liquor-fueled Christmas parties have invited themselves to my wedding.  Maybe it was thinking about all the things I could do with that money.  I just know I clicked one last zero and turned into Randall McMurphy at the end of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and this wedding had become my Nurse Ratched.

Natalie came downstairs to find me on the couch eating my favorite Oreo Cheesequake Blizzard from Dairy Queen knowing full and well fourteen hours earlier I was on a treadmill.

“Are you emotionally eating,” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied with no guilt.

I went to bed in a near-Catatonic state.  I woke up not much better.  At 6:00a Natalie asked if I would be going to the gym with her and I rolled over and said, “No.”

You see, I have never been good managing money.  Caller ID and voice mail were my best friends.

COLLECTION SCHMUCK: This is just a courtesy call to let you know you’re overdue… when can we expect payment?

JIM: Since most of my money is tied up in food and shelter why don’t you just pick a date and we’ll hope for the best?

I can’t tell you the amount of times I’d come home to find my power was shut off not because I didn’t have the money… but because I forgot to mail the payment in.  When they turn it on, you still get charged a fee.  Oh, if anyone that tells you overdraft protection tied to a credit card is a good idea, punch them dead in their face, they have it coming.  Somewhere in the last few years, I learned how to manage money and I’ve become very, very good at it.  Natalie dreams of a wedding she’s probably been planning since she was nine (much like the baby names she has scribbled in her diary since tenth grade).  I, on the other hand, want a new house since I have outgrown my condo.  When Natalie looks at our finances, she sees a wedding.  When I look at it, I see the culmination of years of skill and months of savings that I’ll be spending on cake and flowers instead of a down payment on a new house.

And somewhere in the drive to work this morning I realized I wasn’t buying cake and flowers.  I was buying one of my fiancé’s dreams.  She’s been very reasonable about this, I’ve seen Bridezillas… I know.

She’s been very practical and it isn’t like she’s spending thousands on orchestrated doves.  Most importantly, it’ll make her happy and consequently that’ll make me happy.

And surprisingly, money can sometimes buy that.

The Request Lines Are Open

Natalie and I disagree about music.  Her music is good.  My music sucks.  In her defense, I stopped listening to music circa 1993.  I turned on MTV and realized everybody on that network was younger than me and acting like idiots.  I officially became “old” and much like zombies and vampirism, I didn’t fight it, it only makes things worse.  I just leaned in and took it like a man.

And for my younger readers, MTV stands for Music (not Miscellaneous) Television and they used to play short films set to songs.  These were called videos.  This was before the twelve hour Date My Mom marathons and Flavor Of Love… oh yeah, Flavor Flav was once in a band.

On occasion Natalie will try to explain things to me like who John Mayer is and I have to quickly correct her that I know exactly who he is.  Of course this is because he was on an episode of Chappelle’s Show… not because I can name any of his songs.  Likewise, in the car, one of us will be driving while the other is performing their wingman duties which are 1) looking out for cops, 2) distributing sandwiches, drinks and other food items and most importantly 3) acting as DJ.  There used to be a four which was reading maps but my Garmin Knight Industries Two Thousand does that more accurately than Natalie ever could. 

Another American job replaced by a robot.

The DJ duties are carried out by my Microsoft Zune opposed to Natalie’s iPod not because I like my stuff better but because I bought her the sleek 8gb iPod Nano and I bought myself the 30gb Zune Cinder Block giving us more options.  It’s the difference between a Miata and a Humvee.  I hear Microsoft uses the returned defective Zunes to fix the levees in New Orleans.

She’ll scroll through the titles complaining she doesn’t know any of the artists and I insist she does.

NATALIE: Who are The Cars?

JIM: You know The Cars.

NATALIE:  No I don’t.

JIM: Yes you do.  They’re good.  Put The Cars on.  Track one.

RIK OCASEK (LEAD SINGER FROM THE CARS):  I don’t mind you coming here… and wasting all my time.

NATALIE:  I don’t know this.

RIK OCASEK (LEAD SINGER FROM THE CARS): But when you’re standing oh so near… I kinda lose my mind.

NATALIE: Can I find something else?

Chorus starts.

RIK OCASEK (LEAD SINGER FROM THE CARS):  You know you’re just what I needed!

A light shines in Natalie’s head.

NATALIE: I KNOW THIS!  This is the Circuit City song!  (Singing) I needed someone like me!

The line is actually, “I needed someone to feed,” and don’t ask me what that means either… I just buy the stuff.  Natalie will also mishear lyrics all the time and will argue hers are better since she fancies herself a more accomplished lyricist than Bernie Taupin or Diane Warren.

NATALIE:  (Singing) Sherry don’t like it… rockin’ the cash bar… rockin’ the cash bar.

Somewhere all the members of The Clash wince in unison.

Much of our relationship moves in these circles.  Modern English’s “I’ll Melt With You” has become synonymous with fast food commercials.  Cheap Trick’s “I Want You To Want Me” is that song from the end of Ten Things I Hate About You.

Conversely, I am the one watching TV wondering why Beyonce has a charm that says “Upgrade” in her mouth and Natalie will point out, that’s a song.

JIM: “Upgrade” is a song?  We’ll that’s just stupid.  She might as well write a song about watching videos on her cell phone.

But it’s Beyonce so she could be singing how to conjugate verbs and I wouldn’t care as long as she bounced when she did it.

So we made our wedding playlist.  I vetoed none of hers.  Driving back from Orlando most of what I wanted never made it past the vetting stages.  It was considered dinner music that nobody could dance to.  That’s fine.  I really didn’t care.  It is her day.

If you were wondering, my day is every day afterwards for the rest of my life.

I get to pick the song we walk into the reception to (and no it will not be the Imperial March from Star Wars… the sheer fact any of you thought of it is reason enough for me not to do it).  I originally wanted Isaac Hayes’ “Theme From Shaft” but she put a bullet in that idea saying something about how she didn’t want the words, “…who’s a sex machine with all the chics?” said at her wedding.

Sorry baby, whether Isaac Hayes says it or not, somebody is bound to say it… and I’m just talkin’ ’bout Shaft.

So here is the point to all this: We’re taking requests.  Ground rules.  There will be no Chicken Dancing so don’t even try it.  There will be the Electric Slide, so no need to worry.  Apparently from what I understand, Natalie’s family carries a CD with the Electric Slide on it in the event a wedding breaks out.  I have vetoed anything with the words “Soulja” and “Boy” in the same title.  If anyone Supermans anything it’ll be done by two consenting adults in private.  Leave a comment (at www.maxwellford.wordpress.com) of something you would like played and most importantly, leave your name.  If you somehow stumbled across this blog and neither of us have ever met you and you want us to play Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” you can stop right now.

Even I have limits.

Things I Am Looking Forward To In 2009 (In Chronological Order)

January 20: The Barack Obama Inauguration Address.

Someone once told me there are two kinds of politicians: those who are corrupt and exploit the people and those who care, witness the apathy of the people, and are then corrupted.  I am not one of those people that believes Obama is the Chosen One but you hope for that politician that actually believes what they say.  Right now I am filled with hope and promise and I after watching worldwide reaction to the election I had forgotten what it was like to see other countries wave our flag and it not be on fire.  Seldom do you know when history will be made.  Forty years from now after an Asian woman is the President and my grandchildren are shown holoclips of the first African-American to be inaugurated President of the United States I can tell them their grandmother and I were there, at the mall, amidst several million people that all felt the same way.  Hopefully, I’ll be proud of it.

March 6: Watchmen.

Lately, in comic nerd-dom, we get an event, if not several, every year.  Watchmen actually deserves it.  I’ll quote the standard lines: it’s considered the Moby Dick of of comic books… the only only comic to be included in Time magazine’s 100 Best English Language Novels of All Time.  To me, more importantly, it’s been in development hell for the better part of two decades.  I have a copy of Batman screenwriter Sam Hamm’s draft from 1990.  I remember when producer Joel Silver (Predator, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon) was going to make it with blue naked Arnold Schwarzenegger as Dr Manhattan.  I still have regret that Terry Gilliam (Brazil, The Fisher King, Twelve Monkeys) never got the project off the ground.  This is one of those things like a new Star Wars trilogy or Indiana Jones movie that nerds tell you is being made but I believe it when I see it… and that will be March 6.

April 18: Kiss The Bride.

Okay, this is a gimme but I am that rare guy who’d wanted to be married since he was ten.  If left to my own devices I am a complete mess.  The fact that it gets to be Natalie and not one of the other psychos I have been involved with (you know who you are) just makes it better.  It’s Christmas, my birthday, tax refund day and the release of a new Xbox and a Star Wars movie, a good Star Wars movie, all at the same time.  I won’t waste your time gushing over why Natalie is as great as she is.  I have another blog for that: www.maxwellford.wordpress.com.

April 19: My Caribbean Cruise Honeymoon.

I have never been on a cruise.  I have essentially never been out of the country.  Natalie has pushed my limits of comfort and by the end of the week I am sure I will have had the best vacation of my entire life.

May 8: Star Trek.

I like remakes.  That doesn’t mean they’re all good.  I just like watching how things are reinterpreted for new audiences.  Even better, I like watching nerds freak out.  Star Trek has been dead to me for almost twenty years.  It’s about time someone stopped clinging to the past and did something new with it.  This was supposed to be out this past Christmas and Paramount pushed the date back to a summer release (smart move).  I immediately went to eBay and bought a dozen posters with the incorrect date.  I did the same thing when Titanic was moved from a summer to winter date.

June 16: Splinter Cell Conviction.

I own an Xbox 360.  I refer to it as my Tom Clancy Machine since it’s mostly used for Rainbow Six and Splinter Cell.  The latter is a game where you play a spy who sneaks around in shadows, hangs upside down and breaks dude’s necks.  They’re terrorists and they shouldn’t have come to work anyway.  When a new Splinter Cell game is released I am pretty much useless for a week.  For Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, I would set my alarm clock to get an hour in before work.  Come home and power up the Xbox as I was changing clothes, play until 8:00p.  Watch my shows (pre-Tivo) and then from 10:00p until 2:00a play some more.  I can honestly say when the last game, Splinter Cell: Double Agent, was released, I had subsided on Hot Pockets and Diet Coke and have little recollection of showering most of those days.  I bought the regular Xbox version of Double Agent for the multiplayer and found there was an entirely different game there and the same thing happened.  I love this game so much I want to take behind a high school and get it pregnant.  Luckily this only happens for slightly less than a week.  There hasn’t been a new game since 2006.  Natalie can catch up on her ever-increasing email.

December 18: Avatar.

What is Avatar?  I honestly wish I could tell you but I don’t know.  I can tell you it’s a science-fiction movie starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana and Sigorney Weaver.  It’s shot in some kind of revolutionary 3D and it’s directed by James Cameron.  Yes, James Cameron.  For those of you who don’t know for my money he’s the best action director working in Hollywood and responsible for The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, True Lies and of what am I forgetting, oh yeah, the highest grossing film of all time and winner of eleven Academy Awards, Titanic.  The fact that he hasn’t had a movie in a theatre in twelve years only makes it sweeter (and Avatar opens twelve years and one day after his last film).

Winter 2009: Undebted.

I was at the bank and Jessica Jones was on the phone with her contractor arranging financing for her home and when they asked, “What kind of debt do you carry?” her response was, “None.”  She hung up the phone and I said, “That feels pretty good to say,” and she responded, “You have no fucking idea.”  After a lot of hard work two years later I could say the same thing.  Stuff happens.  College costs money.  Weddings cost money.  Hopefully by the end of the year we’ll be in that place again which leads me to…

Winter 2009: Our New House.

The key word there is “our.”  I own a condo now and it’s okay for one person but when you combine two households you end up jamming stuff into corners and living with the bare essentials.  Natalie is a lawyer and by nature I have yet to meet one that knows how to throw anything away.  She claimed she would only unpack her books she needed as reference (because of course, she’s going to need her copy of Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker for reference).  I have two seven foot towers of boxes that haunt me like Minas Morgul and Orthanc.  We’re preparing to take some of it and stash it in my old room at my mom’s house.  It’ll be the first place she’s ever lived that wasn’t a condo or an apartment.  I’m going to have to hide the Pier 1 and Ikea catalogs.

Winter 2009: My Fighting Weight.

I am a rippling 170 pounds of muscle that I keep under a sixty pound protective layer of fat.  I had lost thirty pounds when I met Natalie (courtesy of NurtiSystem) and then made the mistake of going on vacation.  I found I can’t take days off.  Meals, yes.  A week, no.  Lesson learned.  I fell of the wagon but fortunately had a large pile of food to break my fall.  Natalie has me going to the gym and eating better (something about wanting me to live longer which is probably for the best because I have been treating my body like a rental property).  Baby steps, people, it’s all about baby steps.

And A Bonus One: Mortal Saints And The Agents Who Love Them.

Tony Lipari and I wrote a screenplay.  His first, my ninth.  I consider them practice.  I send them to a small handful of people.  After Finding Chicago (1991) an agent in New York told me he couldn’t sell what I had but liked my writing and if I ever had anything send it to him first.  He told me he was representing two brothers who had sold a screenplay called Assassins and had directed their first movie and were prepping their second.  He was talking about the Wachowski Brothers who had finished directing Bound and were prepping what would be The Matrix.  Apparently getting people to read your screenplays is a big deal.  I was too young to know that then.  Anyway, the new screenplay is called Mortal Saints and it’ll probably go out the end of February.

Crying Babies To The Lobby or Reason #4 I Don’t Own A Gun

December 26 I agreed to see Valkyrie, the new Tom Cruise movie because Yuri was in town.  To be clear, Yuri is something of a World War II whore.  Originally I protested because I hate seeing movies: 1) on weekends, 2) on weekend evenings and 3) on opening weekends.  Weekday and matinee shows severely cut down the teenage jerkoff factor.  Yuri met me halfway and agreed we could go to a matinee show.  I am anal about my movie watching and someday I’ll write a blog about how to watch a movie (like always enter the left door of the theatre because there will be more seats on that side).

So we get our seats and the theatre has the bass booming like they are trying to impress the lowrider douches in the parking lot.  I’m getting old.  After the second trailer and the audible grumbling of the audience I can’t take it.  I run to the lobby and tell the usher.  Two minutes later it’s corrected.  The couple behind us thanks me.

Then the movie starts.  The couple behind us starts talking.  Not whispering, talking.  Like my father used to so at the movies unaware of just how loud his Drill Sergeant voice was.  I only saw my father threaten violence stranger twice.  Once, was when he accidentally cut someone off in traffic and they gave him the finger and called him nigger causing him to drive two miles out of his way with us in the car, follow him into a K-Mart parking lot and tap on the man’s window so they could “talk it over.”  There, he was in the right.  The other time was when he was sitting in a theatre for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and because of the opening “Anything Goes” dance number was convinced he was in the wrong theatre and wouldn’t listen to me and a man in front shushed him to which my father told him to shut the hell up and mind his own business.  Here, he was in the wrong.

I’ll tolerate talking during those “First Look” commercials they show before the show starts.  I’ll even tolerate it when the trailers come on.  When the lights dim and the movie starts, keep it quiet or I’ll give you large bag of hot buttered shut the hell up.  You don’t want to know what a quarter more will get you.

Unfortunately I sat in front of a couple of idiots who I assume one of them must have been blind because the other had to narrate the movie for them.

Hey, that’s Tom Cruise as Nazi (after he appears on screen in Nazi uniform).

He lost his eye (after Cruise is injured in a bombing raid and bleeding out of his eye).

Why did he do that? (this was said multiple times during a movie the entire audience was probably watching for the first time).

His wife must be pregnant (after a close up of Cruise’s character’s wife touching her belly).

He said, “He’s my man now,” (after Cruise is asked does he have an inside man).

This went on for the next two hours.  I sighed and rolled my eyes.  On occasion, I could see Yuri glare at me with a look that said, “are these fucks this stupid?”

I used to like going to movies.  Let me change that: I used to love going to movies.  There was a time where it wasn’t unusual for me to see three movies in a weekend at a theatre.  There are occasions where I have seen three movies in a day.  People complain about the price of movies and I will still argue you can’t buy two hours of entertainment for $10 anywhere.  Concerts?  Sporting events?  You’ll spend twice that for parking.  Comedy show?  $15 in Ocala gets you in the door for an hour show.  Theme park?  $70 and you haven’t even gotten souvenirs.

As much as I like theatres it’s like they’re trying to get me to stay home.  I read an article by a guy who quit going to theatres.  He dealt with the parking.  He dealt with the line to buy tickets.  He dealt with the line to buy snacks and gladly paid $5 for a bag of popcorn knowing if you bought the same crop to feed pigs that $5 would get you a ton of corn.  He stopped dealing with it when the kid at concession handed him an empty cup and pointed him to the soda fountain where he would stand in another line and pump his own $4 Coke.  He politely asked for a manager, got all his money back and never returned.

And a pleasant Go Fuck Yourself to you, kind sir.

I’m with that guy.  I have a 46″ Sony and a home theatre set up that I like enough that I’d take it behind a high school and get it pregnant.  At home I don’t have to deal with the idiots who thought it was appropriate to bring a two-year-old to The DaVinci Code (along with two other small children) and watch the movie while their kid cried in ten minute stretches.  Or the guy who sat in the front row of Mr & Mrs Smith and recorded the movie with his stupid LCD screen open that you could see twenty row behind him.  Or the mother that got up with her crying baby during Species and stood in the back of the theatre while her kid cried so she wouldn’t miss anything.  Seriously, none of us should have been in a theatre watching Species let alone who brings a baby… at a 10:00p show?  Then there was the girl that laughed hysterically through Nacho Libre.  You could watch that movie on Nitrous Oxide with the ghost of Richard Pryor improvising better jokes and you still wouldn’t laugh as much as this girl did.  And my personal favorite was the douche who sat in the theatre and answered his cell phone during The Gift and held a conversation for ten minutes that was clearly audible to us sitting seven rows in front of him.  Eventually my friend Heidi just starting answering back at him.

It isn’t there?  He should check the garage and see if it’s in there.  Maybe I should go help him because it’d be quicker than this phone call, asshole.

I usually keep the movie theatre direct line in my cell phone so I can call the box office and complain like Mr Wilson to the Mitchell family.  That’s how I got that family kicked out out of DaVinci Code because if I have to watch mediocre Ron Howard/Tom Hanks movies I should at least be able to do it in peace.  Yes, I am getting old and get your frisbee off my damn lawn.

Then there is this guy:

James Joseph Cialella, 29, who pulled this:

… from the waist band of his sweatpants and shot a dude for talking during The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.  I don’t know what’s more surprising: the fact someone would shoot someone for talking in a movie or the amount of people who feel the waistbands in sweatpants are adequate to carry a handgun.  Now many of you might not remember but in the early nineties “black movies” got a lot of crap for inciting violence.  You’d pay to see Boyz N The Hood, an anti-gang movie, and somebody would get shot.  Theatres were afraid to carry the movies.  White people were afraid to to go.  The truth is you put a movie out about inner city violence and two guys who hate each other show up, someone’s bound to get shot.  On television, they call that the Source Awards.  It got so bad they started editing gangsta movies to make them look like something else.  Case in point is this poster for Juice (1992) starring Tupac Shakur.

  

Notice the gun on the center right of the left poster is airbrushed out of right poster.  Of course, this poster the Christian Slater turd Kuffs has Nicholson-lite brandishing a big-ass gun in the poster.  That movie was released the following week after Juice and nobody said, “Boo”.

I picture thinktanks at Columbia trying to change the advertising of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button because we know what a hot button Cate Blanchette is.

I am not condoning the shooting of people who talk in movie theatres (or for that matter, movies that star Christian Slater) but it’s similar to my theory about hitting women.  I have been places with women who don’t know when to shut up.  I have seen women turn around and brazenly tell a bunch of thugs to shut the hell up while her man cowers in the seat next to her.  I have been cut off on the highway and had a girl lean over while I am driving and blare my horn at them.  I have a good friend who tells me one of the dumbest things she ever did was get into a fight with her boyfriend, lock herself in a room and when he, who outclasses her by one hundred and eighty pounds and twelve inches, knocked the door off the hinges what was her response?  She insulted him.

Why do they do this?

Because they’ve never been hit.

Wait… wait, hold on a second.  I am not condoning violence against women.  What I am stating is that women are comfortable knowing most men won’t strike them therefore they’ve never been struck by a man.  Men don’t do shit like that because that road raged driver isn’t going to shoot the girl riding shotgun, he’s going to shoot me.  Those thugs aren’t going to beat the shit out of that girl, they’re going to beat her boyfriend who didn’t want to be in a theatre watching Marley & Me in the first place (don’t ask me why the thugs were watching Marley & Me… they like dogs, it’s just a story).  When my friend’s boyfriend caved the door in and she should have been choosing her words carefully she blurted out the first thing that came through her mind which was to insult him more.  She later told me in retrospect, that’s how women get hit.

Men who get in lots of fights usually know how to fight.  I have been in two fights in my life and that’s enough, thank you.  Getting hit hurts… a lot.  I don’t like to get hit.  I also am deathly afraid of prisons because I am doughy and cute.

Again, violence is human nature and violence against women is a horrible truth of society.  What I am saying is that you’re very careful about your actions if you know what the consequences will be and I pretty sure the dude who took a bullet for Benjamin Button will keep his mouth shut the next time the lights go down.