THE SUPERMAN III DOCTRINE

Living in Cambodia and seeing the scarcity of jobs, and the nature of jobs that are available, brings home how utterly, well, silly some of the occupations back home come to seem upon reflection, none being sillier, as the Oscar ceremonies loom closer, than that of a film critic.

Don't get me wrong. Film criticism is a necessary art, helping to shape, confirm and evolve people's critical faculties, but man oh man, it's rarely practiced well, if at all, in the western press. (Come to think of it, isn't that a really awkward sounding phrase -- 'don't get me wrong'? After five years of teaching English, you begin to recognize, quite quickly, those phrases that really seem to make no grammatical sense at all. This is one of those phrases. Try saying it to a Japanese or Cambodian who speaks pretty good English, but is not quite up-to-date on the latest colloquialisms, and marvel at the blank, uncomprehending stare you'll receive. That's the fun part about teaching a foreign language -- you can notice, literally, the moment when comprehension shifts (or bursts) into incomprehension; you see the light suddenly expire from their eyes. I've noticed it too, when speaking to someone in Japanese; as you're listening, it's as if you're brain is counting off all the vocabulary and grammar that you know and comprehend, saying: "Got it...got it...got it...oooh, don't got it. Got it...don't got it..." But I'm getting a little off topic...)

This is the time of year when every film critic, large and small (and Roger Ebert has actually gotten very small, will wonders never cease) trots out their ten-best lists, which are really just an indicator of one person's particular taste.

One thing that particularly ticks me off, about these lists and about the Oscars themselves, is that there rarely, if ever, seems to be any kind of criteria involved in determining what is 'better' than something else.

Think about it. In almost any other kind of contest or competition, you have some kind of rationale or reasoning for why you make the decisons or judgements that you do. If an employer has to choose between two people for a job, he or she is going to do have to be able to articulate why this person was/was not hired at the expense of the other person.

But in choosing somebody for Best Actor or Best Actress, there's no criteria. There's no guide-lines. (And why are the men and the women separated anymore, anyways? I could understand fifty years ago, when the genders were more stratified. But c'mon, it's 2004; there's not a separate category for blacks and whites, fat and thin. Acting's acting, right? Yes, there are better parts available to men, but that doesn't seem enough of a valid excuse.) People pick whoever they want to pick, and we never know why, most of it probably being decided by gut instinct and emotion.

These emotions are what most critics fail to acknowledge, however, as I've talked about previously on this blog. But emotions, and life, real life, are always somehow subordinated when talking about art and its effects on us. The personal is annihilated when it should be put back centre stage.

Let's put it this way.

The reason why movies affect us is because they slam us full-force with an intellectual or emotional wallop. They force us to think, laugh, cry -- whatever. Our reactions are tied into our own situation in life, our reaction to the world around us, our hopes and fears and anxiety about the job interview we have later in the day.

There's a deeper level, though, that a lot of these 'lists' don't acknowledge. They choose a film for its craftsmanship, its message, its embodiment of what cinema can and can't do. But there's more, more, more...

Take Superman III.

Generally regarded as inferior to the first two flicks in the series, while only marginally better the universally derided fourth film. (Which I kind of like, actually, but that's for another blog, the one that'll be about wrongly neglected sequels. I also like Cannoball Run II and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, so sue me. And, believe it or not, the sequel to American Graffitti titled, unoriginally, More American Graffitti, is not half bad...)

I saw Superman III when I was seven years old. I saw it in the theatre. I saw it on a big, big screen. I saw it again at a drive-in, along with Twlight Zone: The Movie. I remember all of this because Superman III was the coolest, wickedest, most awesome experience a seven year old can have.

In fact, I liked it so much that I bought (or my parents bought, most likely) the novelization of the film, and read it while lounging by the pool at the Aladdin Inn in Daytona Beach, Florida, me with a Pac-Man visor perched on my head, Superman with his hands full, trying to outwit that massive computer he was up against.
(There's a picture of me reading the book, wearing the visor, chilling.)

So what does all this mean?

It means that at one point in time you were a seven-year old, too, and there were movies, books, comics, music and experiences that not only rocked your world but formed your world. They were the best and brightest things in it. And we all grow up (whether we like it or not), and we learn critical standards, and we judge our past by the present, to a large degree, whether it's films we're looking at or our relationships to the people and society around us.

And so if you watch Superman III again, and you are no longer a seven-year old kid who likes to wear a Pac-Man visor, then you will notice things that you didn't notice at that age -- plot holes, bad effects, questionable acting. The inner critic in you will make its voice heard.

I tend to ignore that inner critic.

Superman III still rocks.

The real critics, the ones who get paid, seem to lose sight of all our quirky likes and dislikes, our idiosyncratic reasons for like what we do. They want to leech the joy and irreverance out of our own opinion. They want to pretend that there are, in fact, universal standards of grading and determining excellece.

There isn't. There is you, and a movie screen (and a life, too, if you're lucky) and your own dynamic, weird and individual way of reacting and responding to what unfolds before you. Critics always move in herds; the mainstream critics like the same ten, fifteen movies, and the avant-garde critics tend to like the same ten, fifteen movies. Why is that? Because they're responding to what they think they should be responding to.

If one of them, for once, actually bucked the herd and said that he picked Police Academy IV: Citizens on Patrol as the best movie of the year, not because of its craftsmanship or its thematic relevance to the world today, no, but because it reminded him of when he was a kid and how he wanted to be a cop, and how, as a kid, he used to like goofy physical comedy, and this film blended those two elements just right, in a way that he would have loved (and still does), and, besides that, it was a nice day, a glorious spring afternoon, and the Coke was cold and the buttery popcorn was hot and the air-conditioning was turned up just right, and the speakers amplified that wonderful rousing Police Academy music to just the right decibel, all of this occuring only hours after his kid came home with a report card featuring a B+ in history, a B+ for the first time ever in ANY subject, and that was the capper, right there, the perfect ending to a lovely day and a suitable beginning for an evening of light, ludicrous entertainment that took him back, back to when he was a kid, dreaming of a future that promised a bright blue uniform and shining silver badge, if one of them said that, throwing out their cinematic and cultural pretentions and acknowledging the randomness of movies and life and all their time-bending, nostalgia-inducing processes, I'd eat my words and call it a day.

THE CASE OF THE MISSING LAMP

This is the single case involving Sherlock Holmes that I pledged never to reveal, not because of its sordidness (one becomes accustomed to that over the years), but rather due to accusations of vanity which I can already imagine being formulated -- that I, Watson, hid this account for so many years because it involved Holmes' arrest for murder, and my own successful investigation that resulted in his acquittal.

If you are reading this then I am most surely dead, as is Holmes, although the simple thought of Holmes somehow gone from this world strikes me as somewhat absurd. (Indeed, the very notion that he was once a stranger to me, and I to him, seems almost illogical.) I have carefully hidden these papers, and I know not where, or even if, they shall be discovered. I cannot even be certain that my present reader even remembers the very name 'Sherlock Holmes', given the precarious resting place of this document, although I would assume that not only his moniker but his brillance still lingers, if not resonates; the aura surrounding a person of the caliber of Holmes does not dim easily, I believe, even given the restless whims of tide and time.

These words are intended for my heirs, and their colleagues and associates, and, should the occasion present itself, for the people of London, who provided me with the sustenance and stamina to endure what we all endure on this mortal coil, until we can endure no more.

I write the following account (and this rather lengthy prelude) not to glorify my own ingenuity, for I have none. Having known Holmes for as long as I have, I cannot even pretend to compare my acuity and intelligence with his. To do so would not only be considered folly by all enlightened citizens, but crass, in my opinion an even greater and less forgivable sin.

Should I begin the narrative as concisely and intriguingly as I have all of my other accounts of Holmes' adventures, you may be misled into believing that this, too, is merely another unfathomable mystery that had the good fortune to be solved, only this time by myself. You may think you are about to be lulled into sleep by the comfort of a tale told well. I aim to deny you that comfort, because Holmes deserves nothing less than the truth, in all its ribald, untidy complexity. Never has a case depleted more from me physically, mentally and spirtually; and never has my respect and admiration for Holmes escalated more.

No, my intent is noble, and my conscience is at rest. There may come a point in time, through circumstances that have yet to be enacted, when the events of this particular winter's eve may come to light, despite the best efforts and assurances of the municipal authorities that they would be as fleeting as the mist that shrouds London each and every fortnight. I trust these gentlemen, I respect them, but nevertheless, one's own diligence and persistence should never be belittled or disparaged, even by oneself; this document will serve as a counterpoint
to any who dare besmirch the good name of my trusted confidant Holmes, a name and a legacy that, in trying to uphold, very nearly cost me my life.

Rumors have the tendency and the means to live long past the expiration point of their instigators; such being the case, I shall douse the flames of such an inferno before they have the chance to ignite.

So let me begin the tale of Holmes' unfortunate imprisonment, and my own efforts at redeeming the reputation of one whose unlikely life was nearly destroyed by the very city he did so much to protect...

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This was an extract from Dr.Watson's account of Sherlock Holmes' strangest, most unusual case (solved by Watson himself). This document was discovered in a London location (that must remain confidential) by the webmaster of canuckinasia.blogspot.com. Keep checking back periodically for further installments of this unusual tale...

IT'S A RIGHT-HANDED WORLD...(FOR NOW)

So you're seven years old, at the blackboard, answering a math equation. Maybe it's 2+2 = 4. Maybe it's 8-3=5. Doesn't matter. The point is, you're writing, and there's another student beside you writing, and you notice something. The side of their hand, the one this kid is writing with. It's clean. And then you look at your hand, at the soft layer of white dust blanketing the side of your hand stretching from your pinky finger to your wrist. (This section of the hand probably has a medical name, but I don't know what it is. I was absent that day in medical school. Actually, come to think of it, I was absent from medical school itself, wasn't I...) As you scribble your equation, your hand gently glides across what you wrote, smudging both the board and your flesh. Why doesn't it happen to the other kid? What's going on, here?

What's going on is left-handedness, and the curse of being a lefty in a righty's world.

(My brother Ted knows all about this. I'm writing this on his behalf, because he's too introverted to attempt a declaration as detailed as this one.)

There's an article in the current issue of that world-affairs-magazine-for-like-smart-people called The Economist, essentially making the argument that left-handedness may be more prominent in violent societies, because it is advantageous, in a fist-fight situation, to be a lefty; nobody knows how to fight a lefty. (It worked for Rocky against Apollo Creed, but then in Rocky II he switched from being a southpaw fighter to a right-handed fighter to confuse Apollo Creed even further, which was a pretty cool strategy, I admit, but I felt then, and feel now, that it betrayed Rocky's essential left-handed nature, but in some ways that was a moot point because by that point in the picture I was already confused, okay, because earlier in the movie Rocky signs an autograph from his hospital bed with his right hand, which made me think, wait a minute, is this guy an authentic lefty, meaning, does he write left or only fight left, or maybe it was an oversight on Stallone's part, a lapse in judgement and realism on the day of shooting, an embarassing insult to lefties the world over and a mistake that the director should have caught, but the director of Rocky II was Stallone himself, so I guess he's got a lot to answer for, is all I'm saying.) The better a fighter you are, the more impressive you are to chicks, so it's in a species favor to be a strongman.

Or something like that. Couldn't quite get the gist of the article, but the point is: Lefties can fight.

We have to. We learn early on that the world is not for us.

First of all, water fountains at school. Where is the switch-nozzle-thingee? On the right.

Next comes left-handed scissors. I always felt like I was mentally disabled in school having to ask the teacher if they had any left-handed scissors, you know, the ones with the green handle. 'Cause they always had scissors available (one or two, anyways), but they were usually for the corrupt, oppressive, right-handed majority. We got 'special' ones with green handles. Ooooooooh. (Actually, I shouldn't complain, because I learned in Japan that they don't have left-handed scissors at all there, so Japanese lefties are screwed, plain and simple, and Japan, like many Asian countries, still, I think, forces small kids to write with their right hand.)

Even gear shifts in cars are designed for righties. (In those countries that drive on the right, anyways.)

Point is, lefties learn early, yo, that it's not our world -- we're just visiting it. So I always notice, in films and on television, who's a lefty. Who writes with their left hand. Who wields a gun, uzi or otherwise, with their left. Who bats left and throws left. (Full disclosure -- I'm ashamed to admit that I was taught to bat like a righty. And golf like a righty. But I don't play either sport now --baseball or golf -- and I always, always throw left. And I bowl left, too. Proudly.)

I had a book as a kid full of famous lefties. A partial list:

Jack the Ripper. George Bush (senior). Marilyn Monroe. James Cameron. Amadeus. Eminem. Thomas Jefferson. Colin Powell. Glenn Gould. Hans Christian Anderson. James Baldwin. Richard Simmons. Jim Henson. Peter Jennings. Bob Dylan. David Letterman and Jay Leno. Franz Kafka. Beethoven. Ringo Starr. Fidel Castro. Jimi Hendrix. H.G.Wells. Phil Collins. James A.Michener. Helen Keller. Paul Simon. Celine Dion. (Uh, okay -- disregard that last one. Maybe we shouldn't be so proud of her, despite her Canadian heritage. My apologies.) John F.Kennedy. Ross Perot. Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton. Spike Lee. Bruce Willis. John Irving. Julia Roberts (I think).

(Okay, maybe Jack the Ripper isn't the best role model for a lefty, but still -- you see what being a lefty can drive otherwise sane men to do?)

I mean, come one -- J.F.K. himself was a lefty. And is it a coincidence that three presidents in a row (Reagan, Bush, Clinton) were lefties? Not to mention the two dominant late-night television hosts (David Letterman and Jay Leno)? Lefties seek lofty heights. Lefties have battled adversity to triumph against all natural known (and unnatural) odds.

Despite the fame and respect lavished upon the above individuals, lefties are still seen as somewhat freakish. Left-handed hitters and pitchers and baseball are a pain in the ass. As are left-handed boxers. They're problems to be conquered, these people are, genetic abnormalities that are perceived, not as people, but as dilemmas.

Another thing: You ever try writing with a pen on a lined sheet of paper with your left hand? Once you write a sentence, that part of your hand between the pinky and the wrist will, inevitably, unavoidably, pass over what you have just written. And if the ink of your pen is the least bit malleable, or wussy-like, it will smudge. So after twenty minutes you will look down at the paper to gaze upon your intellectual ponderings, and you will see smitterings and smatterings and splotches and glotches of blue ink. If you're lucky, a few words are legible. You righties are able to look upon what you have just written in real-time as you glide your pen across the page, marvelling at your exquiste penmanship, at the elegant grace of your thoughts. Us lefties, on the other hand, look only outwards as we write, towards the future, leaving the words and their impact and their resonance behind, a gift for the reader, whoever he (or she) may be. (It's only afterwards that we go back and look, to reflect and consider, and we see that it's all an illegible mess, but hey -- we're forward thinkers, is all...)

Anyway, for all your righties out there, don't think that lefties don't have their act together. We're waiting. We're watching. We're aware when our accomplishments are diminished or disregarded, and we remember these oversights. (After all, Helen Keller was blind, deaf, mute and left-handed -- the last part always being omitted in her biography, and look what she accomplished. I would like to argue that being left-handed was her biggest, most grievious handicap, but in these politically sensitive times, I can't further that argument publicly. I just can't. I'd be put away, or shot, or killed, or worse.)

Just think about it -- that utterly innocuous person you see walking down the street may, in fact, unbeknownest to you, be left-handed. You may notice them nervously glancing at your wrists, both the right and the left, trying to determine exactly which one has a watch attached to it. If it's on your right wrist, you're okay. You're safe. You're one of us.

If it's on your left...

Just remember: We don't always give back those bright and shiny lime-green left-handed scissors. Sometimes we keep them. In our pockets. As we walk the streets.

You've been warned.

IF YOU NOTICE

I've got a bit of a bulging right eye now, the result of who-knows-what, but according to the local Australian doctor who I visited the other day, a teeny tiny ant may have found the taste and texture of my skin too tempting to resist. (What a character, this doctor is. Mid-fifties Aussie lady, tall as a basketball player, married to a Cambodian, crude as a sailor. And on top of that, she knows her stuff.) The result is not quite as bad as what Robert DeNiro endured in Raging Bull, but it definitely looks like somebody clocked me a good one.

The remedy? A few pills, a few drops in the socket a few times a day, and there you go. Cured. Although it's been three days, and, while the swelling has been reduced a little bit, it still doesn't seem a heck of a lot better, medicine or no. I read the instructions that came with the eyedrops (yes, eyedrops do have instructions, funnily enough), and it mentioned that Cambodia is a dusty country, uh-huh, knew that one, and it stressed that this dust contains all kinds of nasty things that you don't necessarily want getting your eye. Or your nose. Or your mouth.

I knew that, too -- after a year and a half in this dusty place, how could you not -- but I'd never really thought about it before. Hadn't considered it much. What that dust could do, if it got inside me. What havoc it could wreak on my fragile body. Let alone my eye. (And it's my right eye, too, which is the one with the stigmatism, said stigmatism being the reason why the right lens of my glasses is so much bigger than the left one.) I briefly thought about what would happen if I happened to lose sight in my right eye. Scary, but I do have another one, another eye, and hey, I wonder what it would be like to read with only one eye all the time? (And now I've tempted fate, God, the controller of the universe, whatever deity is floating out there, and I'd like to declare that I will not tempt this force any longer: I like my right eye, alright? It's served me well. Please let me keep it. Amen.)

Point is, you get used to the dust. You get used to the little lizards called geckos crawling around your walls, croaking their rhythmic croak every morning around six. The smell of rancid water down by the river. The fog of dust that bobs and weaves its way through the crowded streets, guided by the mercy of the wind. You don't really think about what it does to you. What it can do to you.

Oh, the objects and forces malice that await us! The STOP sign the moto driver ignores. The brakes on the car that just, won't, brake.

Luckily, we have happy endings most of the time. We go to work, come home, sleep. We fail to notice, if we're lucky.

So, while I was sleeping and unnoticing, a peckish ant decided to give me a little peck and see what I had to offer. (I'm hoping it was an ant. The idea of, like, a giant cockcroach crawling across my chest, up my neck, over my cheeks and onto my eye is something I don't care to consider. Even though I just did.) Maybe it lingered on my face, staring at the closed lid of my eye. (Can ants stare? I guess they can, right?) Maybe it had to choose, this ant did, between a piece of my forehead and a piece of my eyelid. Maybe it deliberated, pondered, considered. Maybe it had a moment of mercy, when it was going to turn around and head back down the bed, angling for my knee or a few of my toes. Then it thought: Naw, screw it. And it dove right in.

I didn't know it was there; I was in dreamland. The clouds of dust and the piles of garbage and the stench of sewage are there when I'm awake. Not everywhere, no, but common enough, potent enough, to make me sometimes pause.

If I notice.

GET A LIFE

Since I've been overseas, I've read a lot of biographies. Right now I'm reading one on former Russian leader Khruschev. In the last few years I've read books about Michael Jordan, Jackie Robinson, Albert Einstein, Francois Truffaut, Condoleeza Rice, Alexander the Great, Fidel Castro, Pierre Trudeu, Paul Martin, Muhammad Ali, John "A Beautiful Mind" Nash, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and probably somebody else that I've forgot about, which means that their life wasn't meaningful.

Doesn't it? A good biography will make you believe that somebody's life, hell, anybody's life, did, in fact, have meaning, a shape and a purpose that can only be made clear by analyzing it in exhausting detail.

At their best, biographies allow you a glimpse into the totality of a person's life. Perhaps noone's life is ever meant to be examined in such exhausting detail, and there is, of course, the danger that the biographer has a particular axe to grind -- or, even worse, idolizes their subject so much that even obvious faults are rationalized to the nth degree. Even so, I think biographies are a perfect way to glimpse a significant person in their particular historical context. In other words, you learn the era through the man (or woman) being profiled. You see the tides of history recede or advance based on one person's actions. Character defines events, and events then define character.

At their worst, biographies can be, well, boring. There's a part in Stephen King's book ON WRITING where he's focusing on the primary, paramount importance of the story when writing, um, stories. Some people think it's all about character, King says (and I'm paraphrasing), but if you want character, go and read a biography. You'll get all the character you need.

I think I know what he means. Many biographies, after the first few hundreds pages or so, turn into a variation of: "And then he did this. And then he did that. And then he did this. Oh, and then he did that, can you believe it?"

What's missing? A narrative. The best biographers try to shape some kind of story into their profiles' lives, if only because the reader, to some degree, expects it. We live our lives through narrative, I think, creating one's for ourselves and expecting it in the examples of others. There's a fundamental need for continuity and structure in our existence; good biographies will look for those nooks and crannies in their subjects lives that indicate WHERE and WHY things took place. They will look for a framework. If necessary, they will make one up.

All written words are attempts at meaning. Attempts at biography are efforts focused on one life in one particular period of time. There may not be a logical story; there may not be an identifiable narrative. The author (and the reader) may search in vein for any kind of structure at all. Some people's lives are so chaotic and messy and, well, human that narratives elude not only their chroniclers but themselves, too. But by examining these lives and crafting an arc (as arbitrary and nonexistant as it may be), biographers allow us to revel in the sways and shifts of another's person time on earth. We can gain advice and seek solace in the actions of others. We can compare who we are and where we came from with the giants that once walked this earth. We can identify and empathize with the best and worst in ourselves.

IMAGINE THIS

Imagine this:

You're a thirteen year old Cambodian girl who has been sold into the sex trade by your parents. You live in a brothel, sleeping with God knows how many men a day. You are fed when the kindly pimp in charge of the place feels like feeding you. You look out the window at night and picture the day when you will see the moon that shines down on your home village. Is this moon the same as the one back home? Sometimes you wonder.

Luckily, you are rescued. (I say 'luckily', even though many 'rescued' prostitutes return to the sex trade, for reasons that are multiple and sad -- being scorned by their family, feeling an emotional attachment to their pimps, a sense of shame that has no limits or end.) An NGO specializing in the trafficking of women and children swoops down and takes you and over forty others to someplace safe, warm, protected.

But this is Cambodia. You are rarely protected in Cambodia.

And so, as reported by The Cambodia Daily the last few days, what happens?

An armed group of over thirty men and women stormed into the women's shelter and abducted more than eighty sex workers who had been rescued only the day before. They were forced into 'several luxury sports vehicles'. The two guards in charge of the place were too afraid to get involved. Eight police officers from the government's elite fighting force mysteriously left their posts soon after arriving, shortly before all hell broke loose.

I read something like this and I wonder, not what what kind of country I'm in, but what type of planet I'm on.

Women and children being trafficked for sex. Rescued by aid workers. Kidnapped by their old pimps, in 'luxury sports vehicles'. Guards being paid off to be conveniently absent at the appointed time of abduction.

There are so many factors at work here, all of them brutal, all of them horrifically sad, many of them focusing on the concepts of 'rights'.

I've become more conscious of this after working for awhile at the NGO (non-governmental organization) where I work now.

Many countries in Asia are, how shall we say, unfamiliar with the concept of people having 'rights'. If you are a child, or a woman, you obey those in control -- meaning, parents and husbands. If you are poor, you obey the rich. If you are a citizen, you obey the government, or they will beat you, torture you, kill you.

Simple.

It's a simple concept and at the same time mysteriously difficult to wrap your head around -- the fact that people don't know that it's actually not okay to sell your child into the sex trade, even if you need money, even if there are few other options. This is what we are taught at a young age (if we are lucky). Don't hit your brother. Say sorry to your sister. You can't take his toy truck because he's not done playing with it. Because it's not right.

This is not to say that these concepts don't exist here; of course they do. Humans are humans, pain is pain, and right is right.

But when you add in poverty, coupled with people in power linked to government, armed with wealth (and AK-47's), you create a system that acknowledges the rights of only one group: those who have the means to kick your frigging ass from here to next Wednesday. And then bury you while you scream.

Rights are violated all the time back home. The people who commit the offensive acts should be prosecuted, jailed, punished. We are right to complain about our rights in a democracy that represents the world at it's finest and demands respect.

It's just...

The next time you're on the street, and someone's bumped into you without saying a word, arrogant prick, or you're at work, and someone's screwed you over, and said something about you behind your back, and not paid you back the twenty bucks you lent them, like, three months ago, hello, I know he didn't, like, forget, because I see him every day, the next time that happens, just pause, okay? Just breathe. Think about a warm room, and eighty terrified Cambodian country-hick women shaking and crying and scared, really scared, upset and relieved and hoping, hoping, that they can maybe, if they're lucky, make it back to their home village. And then imagine the door to the room opening, thirty masked men and women armed with machine guns bolting in, screaming at them, striking them, taking them back to a life of servitude and rape and one more customer, just one, do as I say, and close the door. You stink.

Just think about it.

That's all I'm saying.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO GET HIT

Have you ever seen a boxing match?

I mean live, in person, close to the ropes, near enough to smell the sweat and taste the fear.

I haven't, but I'd like to. It's a savage, brutal, animalistic sport that has very few redeeming qualities, leading its practitioners to a middle-age filled with nothing but headaches, blurry vision and a faulty memory.

And those are the good points.

Kickboxing is popular here in Cambodia, (and Thailand, too) but I can't get into that form of the sport. Something about adding kicking to boxing seems to take away the, I don't know, basicness of it. For me, boxing is about punching somebody in the face.

"You every get hit in the head sixty, seventy times a night?" Stallone asks Talia Shire in the original (and best, although the first sequel comes close) Rocky. "It starts to hurt after awhile."

Yes, getting whacked that many times one evening does hurt (I'm assuming), and it shouldn't be, well, fun to wathc somebody go through that, but it is. (For some.) Yet it's more than amusement -- it's elemental. It's archaic. Like the hundred-metre dash, boxing is sport and humanity at its purest.

Some people are scoffing or puking right now, but there's an undeniable grace and balance to the sport that can't be denied. (If you know where to look.) It's why two of the literary world's most esteemed writers, Norman Mailer and Joyce Carol Oates, have written reams on the sport's spectacles. (Read Mailer's The Fight for a philosophical, thrilling exploration into the 'Rumble in The Jungle' fight against George Foreman that was featured in the documentary When We Were Kings.)

Defending his sport against the naysayers, one of Ali's old trainers said: "What people don't understand about boxing is, you don't have to get hit."

Ah, and there's the rub. That single line -- you don't have to get hit -- encapsulates what many people ignore about boxing: its artistry. Its precision. Its strategy. Its dimensions. That's what attracts the inflated egos of the literati and the drunk guy at the end of the bar at Joe's Pub, the one who always falls off the stool.

I'm thinking about boxing 'cause I picked up a biography of Muhammed Ali, probably the most significant American of the twentieth century (after Martin Luther King and the guy who created The Fall Guy. You ever see that? With Lee Majors, the unknown stuntman, who made Eastwood look so fine, as the song said? That was a good show. So the creator of it deserves my props, is what all I'm saying.) No other sport could have allowed or enabled Ali to transcend the sport and become the icon he became.

Soccer, maybe. Because both soccer and boxing are for poor people. You don't need money for either. Which is why you can find variations of both pasttimes in practically every country in the world. (Maybe even in Antarctica, but I'm not sure. )

Boxing, though, appeals to our instincts to protect and defend and defeat. One person against another. Will against will. Each drawing out the other's energy to draw out, in turn, the best of themselves. Each needing the other they're determined to decimate.

Oooh, good stuff, boxing is. Yes, it is ridiculous. Yes, it is inhumane. But if sport serves as a microcosm for life (and I think it does) then boxing explores that microcosm better than any other. It is an intense, unforgiving bolt of life, in all its bloody, ragged glory. Three or ten or twelve or fifteen rounds of sweat and tears. In the end, a winner and a loser. All of it futile. A spectacle of barbarism.

Donald Sutherland, portraying legendary running coach Bill Bowerman, states in the great movie Without Limits: "Some consider running an absurd pasttime on which to waste our energies. But if you can find meaning in the kind of running you need to be on this team, then maybe you can find meaning in another absurd pasttime -- life."

And if you can find (or are willing) to find meaning in something as pathetic and pointless as boxing, maybe you can find meaning in that other absurd pasttime, too.