The Oscar's Show

Ok, here's how I do the Oscar's thing. I walk through the den from time to time while the red carpet show is on and ask Pam how it's going. She gives me the highlights. Then I come downstairs on my way to the fridge for a snack later and sometimes stop for a few minutes to watch an acceptance speech. Then, the next morning I read all about it on the Internet, watching selected clips of highlights if I find myself interested.

I'm not anti-Hollywood. I enjoy good movies, always have. This year, Pam and I saw four of the best picture nominees and will probably catch a couple more of them soon. But a team of black ops interrogators from Guantanamo Bay couldn't force me to watch the Academy Awards show. Three and a half hours of self-congratulatory claptrap and left wing advocacy is as close to hell as Earth gets.

However, watching the highlights, I did learn a few things...

1. Lady Gaga can actually sing. Who knew? 

2. To judge from their responses to Patricia Arquette's speech, J-Lo and Merrill Streep are apparently vastly underpaid.

3. Neil Patrick Harris has been spending some time at the gym, and isn't at all concerned with preserving his dignity.

4. In order for a movie to win an award at the Oscars, it's essential that nobody has actually bought a ticket to see it.

5. An essential part of every acceptance speech is the obligatory pitch for a cause, to include, but not be limited to...equal pay for women, immigration, the environment, racial injustice, and gay rights.

But what I really learned from this year's festivities is what I already knew. When presented with films about such weighty matters as, A. The war in Iraq and America's deadliest warrior, B. The brave Enigma code breaker, C. A Martin Luther King biopic, and D. The story of famed physicist and thinker Stephen Hawking...the Academy gives the award to a movie about...Hollywood.

They just can't help themselves.

Does Obama Love America?

Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City, made headlines recently by questioning whether or not President Obama loves America. The mayor's question has hung in the air like three day old fish, stinking up our political discourse from the salons of Manhattan to the dinner parties in Georgetown. I'm sure the Sunday shows will talk about little else. What to think...

It is generally bad form to cast about impugning the patriotic commitments of politicians. For one thing, patriotism is so difficult to define. Love of country is hard to quantify. For instance, I certainly love America, but I don't love everything about it. I hate the political dysfunction that has produced 18 trillion dollars in debt. I hate the career political class from both parties who have, House-of-Cards-style, made a mockery of the democratic process. So my love is selective. I'm generally suspicious of those who claim to love their country "right or wrong," in much the same way as I am suspicious of a parent who loves their kids so much that it renders them blind to their faults. There is such a thing as loving something too much, after all.

But, generally speaking, my default emotion towards my country is something close to love. In the President's case, as with most Progressives, it seems more complicated. He is a product of a political philosophy which views America, from its founding, as a deeply flawed place. Progressives have always viewed America's successes with suspicion. The Declaration of Independance? Just a document designed to preserve white privilege. The Constitution? Simply a straight jacket designed to encumber the power and benevolence of the central government. The industrial Revolution? Ill-gotten gains accrued on the backs of slave labor. In the Progressive view of history, America isn't a shining city on a hill or even a beacon for freedom for the oppressed, but rather a racist, misogynistic, greedy collection of rubes and hicks who need to be controlled by the enlightened from each coast. America is something which needs to be constantly and continually radically transformed from something base to something better, and the only people capable of this redemption all happen to be...Progressive.

So, when the President tells us to get off of our moral high horse over ISIS because of Jim Crow laws from fifty years ago, it feeds into the suspicion that he is much more comfortable criticizing our sins than he is criticizing the sins of our enemies. He is the only President in my lifetime who's rhetoric always seems to soar highest when he is taking us to task for our national sins.

Still, I have no doubt that the President loves America. I am equally confident that President Obama knew that George Bush also loved America in 2008 when he accused him of being "unpatriotic" for piling up 4 trillion dollars onto the national debt. It was a Presidential campaign and people get riled up and say things that they wish they could take back. Mayor Giuliani was wrong for making such an accusation about a sitting President.

While I love America for what it is and has been, a force for good in the world, an intrinsic love...the President loves America for what it has the potential to become if it adopts his policies. Perhaps that is a different kind of love, but it is love nonetheless. America's past and present sins do nothing to alter my love of country, primarily because I know that every nation in the history of mankind has closets filled with skeletons. But simple love of country does not blind me to criticism of it or a desire to fix what ails her. In this way, I suppose, the President and I agree.

Dinner and a Movie Review

We don't call them date-nights anymore. But last night was one. It started with dinner at Firebirds with my two sisters and their husbands. We would have been easy to find...the loud table of six arguing about politics and bragging about our kids, ironically placed adjacent to a table of deaf people. We stayed entirely too long, the poor waitress stopping by every five minutes refilling the sweet tea, her eyes practically screaming, "How can we miss you if you never leave?" It was great fun. 

The topics of conversation were varied and included such classics as the deplorably incoherent state of American foreign policy, the trials and tribulations of directing children's choirs, the adorableness of my sister's new grandchild, our unanimous conclusion that my daughter hit the jackpot with the selection of her husband, my son's love life, how horrible this past week must have been for our brother in Maryland having to deliver mail in 10 degree weather, and how great it is that Christina's gynecologist is running for the State Senate. Bon apetite!

When we finally got back home, Pam and I settled down to watch a movie that had been on my "must see" list ever since its release...The Judge. Holy cow, what a movie. Any film which features the great Robert Duvall and the sensational Robert Downey Jr. would have to be good, but The Judge was great. Watching these two heavyweights on screen felt like watching a greatest hits compilation. The story was rich, the characters believable, and the performances nothing short of brilliant. Duvall is getting old and may not be with us too much longer. But when he passes, the title of greatest living American actor will pass easily and smoothly to Downey Jr. This was the kind of film that made you believe that it didn't actually have a script, it was just two geniuses making it up as they went along, going with the power of the emotional moment, and luckily for us there were a million of them. Everything about The Judge is utterly believable with the possible exception of one overly personal exchange between Downey the lawyer, and Duvall, his father/defendant on the witness stand. Other than that brief departure, the picture was nearly perfect for my taste. Do yourself a favor and rent The Judge.

So now it's Saturday and we wait for the snow and whatever else might be in store for us on this perfectly awful February day. Only twenty eight more days until spring.

I Hate The Middle East

Somebody's needs to say it, might as well be me. I really, truly hate the Middle East. The entire region is like an enormous infected boil on the backside of civilization. It's a dusty, dirty, violent cess pool of dysfunction. The place has been giving the world a headache for my entire lifetime, and centuries before I ever came along. It's like a thousand year old Hatfield v. McCoy feud only instead of horses and muzzleloader rifles, they have camels and nuclear weapons. Throw in religious extremists, ritual beheadings, wailling walls, temple mounts and beat up Toyota pick up trucks and you've got the Geo-political version of a hit reality television blockbuster...Survivor Tel Aviv.

Yes, I know about the cultural and historical significance of the place...cradle of civilization and all. And yes, I'm aware that Israel is there, the birthplace of our Lord. I'm reminded of this salient point roughly 50 times a month at my church, where it seems they are rounding up volunteers to go tour the Holy Land every week. We are shown slides of barren hillsides, each indistinguishable from the next..."and this is the Mount of Olives," intones the speaker, "an indescribably moving experience!" I'll take his word for it since the only way you're getting me on a tour bus full of Christians touring the countryside of Israel in 2015 is at room temperature.

Every day of my life there has been some sort of "Middle East Peace Initiative" going on, usually with the United States hip deep in the middle of the thing. And every day of my life, there has been no peace of any kind in the Middle East. This despite the heroic and tireless efforts of two generations of would be peacemakers. Several of them have won Nobels, but still no peace. In the past, what happened in this vast wasteland was of huge strategic importance to us since we desperately needed the region's oil. Now, not so much, (thank you, fracking!). 

Now we have ISIS, the latest and most convincing argument against Evolution. This group of anonymous barbarians has brought back Middle Ages style savagery and combined it with 21st century technological innovation. This unholy alliance has resulted in a series of slickly produced snuff videos depicting the gruesome deaths of a parade of alleged "enemies of Islam." Watching them is to be reminded that while all men may be created equal, they don't stay equal for long.

Our President seems uniquely ill-equipped to be a wartime executive. His heart doesn't seem to be in the effort to confront ISIS. I watched him give his speech yesterday at yet another conference at the White House decrying something called "violent extremism." He tried his best, but to hear him talk you could be persuaded that ISIS would go away if only they had better job opportunities. It was all very strange, the kind of speech you would expect him to give at the Urban League or something. 

Part of me is glad that he is so reticent. Part of me thinks that the Middle East deserves what it gets. Despite the best efforts of generations of diplomats, if they insist on killing each other with box cutters, then have at it. That may sound cold and uncaring, and perhaps on some level it is. But at some point the people of the Middle East will have to become responsible for the dysfunction of the Middle East. 

The sooner, the better.

Snow Memories

Snow. The mere suggestion of it in a weather forecast used to produce within me giggling excitement. Snow meant the possibility of a day or two being commuted off of my school sentence. Then later when I became a father it meant a day off of work that I could spend building a snowman with my kids.  Now it's just frozen precipitation that piles up on the sidewalk and my driveway. There are no kids to bundle up. There's just me trudging out in the mess with a shovel, and the horrible idea that maybe Lucy would love a chance to play outside without the leash.

I was at least half right. She indeed loved playing outside without the leash. 

The problem started the second I began removing the snow from these steps. The loud scraping noise of shovel on bricks, made worse by the amplifying qualities of 8 inches of snow sent her into a wild fleeing panic! Lucy soon discovered that she very much enjoys running free in the neighborhood with me in pursuit. 

I'm sorry. I so much more prefer this.

I guess the problem with snow is that it reminds me of some of the best memories of the past. Listening to Alden Aaroe reading the school closing lists on WRVA, "...Accomack, Albemarle, Alleghany, Amelia..." in that fabulous baritone voice of his along with a couple of pitches for the WRVA shoe fund. Bundling up my kids and spending a morning making a snowman and sliding down the hill in our front yard was about as much fun as fathering gets. Watching them cling to their cups of hot cocoa afterwards is a picture that I'll never forget.

 Snow is very much like Christmas. With children, it's magical. Without children, it's an overrated intrusion into the comfortable routine of life. With a lunatic dog, it's a little of both.

Our Weekend Trip

Our Columbia weekend is now at an end, and with a few notable exceptions, Lucy was fabulous. This was our first real car trip with her and we had no idea of what to expect. With her track record of neurosis we were prepared for the worst, fears of non-stop whining and projectile vomiting dancing in our heads,(we took Pam's car). Instead, she sat bolt upright in her seat for the first hour of the trip staring out the window, shaking like a leaf, but making no complaint. About the time we crossed the North Carolina line she finally laid down. Then, just outside of Roanoke Rapids, we stopped at the Halifax County Visitors Center to take her to the coolest place ever...a dog run! This was a large fenced in yard, one for small dogs and one for large dogs, where you just turn your travel weary dogs loose and let them run and rip in an open field. Lucy met two other dogs and had the time of her life

chasing tennis balls for fifteen minutes. When we got back in the car, she immediately laid down and slept all the way into the parking lot of Jon and Kaitlin's apartment! Thank you, Halifax County.

I had never seen the apartment before, except through pictures. It was so much larger than I was expecting. They have done an amazing job decorating and furnishing the place. It looks like they have lived there for years, so cozy and welcoming. Watching the two of them acting as host and hostess made me quite proud. I think after 27 years, I can stop worrying about my daughter!

Now, about those notable exceptions. Lucy wasn't nearly as impressed with the apartment as Pam and I were. WAYYYYY too many pillows for her taste! So high was her nervous-o-meter, in 48 hours she only managed to eat one full meal. The one thing we brought with us that we thought would reassure her...her bed...she wanted nothing to do with. Instead, for the first time in her life, she insisted upon sleeping in the bed with us. On the bright side, whenever we left her alone in the apartment she made no messes and tore up nothing, a great relief.

Her big event was the trip to Jon's employer, Congaree National Park. It was very cold, but sunny and there was a 2.5 mile hike along a boardwalk pathway deep into the great swamp. Besides the fact that Lucy insisted upon greeting  every pedestrian we encountered with her famous high five maneuver, Lucy had a blast, not once attempting to launch herself into the muddy depths below. There were two unfortunate incidents, both involving senior citizens. First, Lucy encountered her first wheelchair person, a kind and friendly elderly man who wanted to get to know this lovable dog, only to be treated to Lucy's first and only low growl and bark of the day. Embarrassing. Then a bit later, I let out
the leash a bit too much, allowing Lucy to catch up to an older and very unsteady man ahead of us. Of course, Lucy introduced herself with a cheerful jump and before I could reach her, had wrapped the leash around the old guys legs. Only divine intervention prevented the man from a face-plant and broken hip.

The trip home went even better. Instead of it taking her an hour to settle down, she was asleep in fifteen minutes. All things considered, the trip was a raging success. There will be many more in the future.

Am I a Writer or Just Nuts?

There are so many times when I wish I would have paid better attention in college. Especially that creative writing class I took my sophomore year. Back then I tried really hard to listen and apply myself, I really did. But I would start every class determined to make it through to the end fully engaged, only to find myself staring out the window 15 minutes in wondering why it is that a curve ball is so hard to hit, or why we call black light "black" when in fact it's purple. Anyway...where was I? Oh yeah, creative writing class. If I would have paid closer attention, maybe I would have learned something useful about the writing process. That way, I would know whether or not the way I write is normal or totally whacked. For any of you out there who are writers, please feel free to enlighten me.

I wrote a novel two years ago called "A Life of Dreams." It is currently hanging out in my Dropbox account waiting for me to do something with it, and the wonderful and talented Denise Roy is probably wondering what the heck I'm doing letting it sit there, but that's another story. That story started out with nothing more than an idea of what it might be like to be a gambling savant. I sat down one night at my laptop and started typing, having no earthly idea what the story would be about. Eight months later it was finished. It was as if it wrote itself. All I had to do was make myself available to the keyboard of my computer and my fingers would be taken over by this mysterious force. Well, now I'm writing a new novel, but this one is being written entirely in my head. I have yet to type a word. It started with a single sentence that popped into my head one day when I was on the treadmill at the gym. So far there are three characters, a bizarre yet coherent plot and some fine conflict...all floating around in the vast empty spaces of my head. Every time I think about sitting down and committing the thing to paper, it all gets convoluted and starts to fall apart.

So, what I would really like to know is what is the proper procedure for writing?  Is there more than
one way to do it, or is there a plan to follow that makes it easier? Secondarily, am I an idiot? If you are a writer, or a Psychiatrist I would appreciate any advice you could provide.

Thank you.