"If you want to run, run a mile. If you want to experience another life, run a marathon."
-- some runner more eloquent than me
I'm thinking September, possibly October. This does not have to be the last and final year that I attempt to run a marathon, no, but I think the time is now, approaching thirty, to give it another shot. To see what I'm made of.
Not that that's important. The first time I came to Cambodia, teaching English to street kids with a Japanese NGO, I stayed at a hotel in Battambang that was showing, God knows how or why, the Canadian Triathalon Championships. Swear to God. Simon Whitfield, the winner, a stellar athelete and inaugural winner of the Gold medal in the sport at the Athens Olympics, talked about how he had had a bad year. And I remember thinking quite clearly: You did not have a bad year. My mind, still reeling from the dirty roads and the dusty air and the sheer, endless squalor of Cambodia, the stink of Cambodia, rejected Whitfield’s plea for sympathy, as innocent as it was. these people have had a bad year, I thought; these people have had a bad life.
But we are who we are. Any long-distance runner (or wannabe one) will eventually come to that point in time where the prospect of running a marathon takes on its own perverse and imminent attraction. I tried to run one three, four (five?) years ago, in Japan, but I blew out my knee a week before the race. It was just as well; I had tried to train in under four months, from a starting weight that was, let’s just say, somewhat immense. (Note to self: Avoid training for a marathon when one’s train station has a Wendy’s, McDonald’s and KFC within walking distance of your employment.) I vowed to tackle the marathon again, someday, and perhaps that day is soon.
We change as we grow (and grow as we change), and so I’m trying to enjoy, if not relish, the challenge of running longer and longer distances. My Sunday run has reached the two hour point, and the thought of running almost double that, which I’ll most likely need to do to complete a marathon, does give me the old Kathy Bates-shaving-James-Caan's-neck-with-a-straight-razor-in-Misery feeling at the base of my stomach every now and then.
The great thing, though, about not worrying about how fast you’re running is that you simply just run; you listen to your body, and sip some water, and watch the traffic and the people glide by you as you glide by them. I’ve actually found that my chest and my arms feel fine by the end; it’s my legs that feel as if somebody has slowly, painfully extracted something essential from their architecture. But that pain has its own rewards, as transitory and slightly sadistic as they may be.
And yet, isn’t life transitory and slightly sadistic, anyway? We age and endure and lose track of our body and ourselves. Running as something as extreme as a marathon is a way to keep track of your body and your self; it’s a means to assess who you are at that particular point in time – well or sick, energetic or sluggish, in pain or content. It’s an arbitrary distance, that 42 some odd kilometers is, but so what? Everything’s arbitrary – where we’re born and where we’ll die, who we love and who we hate, what we admire and what we dismiss. Life is nothing but an acquisition of prejudices and fetishes, and the marathon, perhaps, is a gateway to uncovering a little of both.
Maybe I’ll drop out after Mile One. Perhaps my body will collapse under the pressure. It might even be easier than I think. (Though I doubt it.) Believe me, I’ve considered all options.
No matter. I’ve learned long ago that what we learn from failure is at least as edifying as what we learn from success, if not more so. Failure means you try and you fall. I tried to train for a marathon before, so I know what it’s like to not pull it off. I’ve always found that imagining the worst thing that can possibly happen, and then accepting it, is a sure-fire way to confront and conquer any looming challenge that threatens to unhinge your confidence and cohesion. Once you’ve accepted the worst that can happen (barring death), then the thing itself loses its ability to hamper your dreams.
And it’s good to have dreams. It’s good to try and go after them. It’s good to set your sights on an arbitrary, manmade distance, and see if you can get from here to there and back again, with someone new yet familiar waiting for you at the finish line. Someone who looks a lot like yourself.
(For anyone interested in the hallowed history of my high-school running 'career', you can find it in the link dated 03/02/2005 in the ' archive' section to the right. For anyone interested in fake boobs on real celebrities, you can find them on www.awfulplasticsurgery.com. Can you believe the reading options I give my readers? Can't get variety like this at www.cnn.com, I'm telling you...)
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Friday, May 13, 2005
MORE OR LESS
There's a picture of myself that I've always liked.
(Boy, does that sound egotistical or what. But it's a picture from my childhood, not some badly lit, vaguely obscene Polaroid where I'm flexing my butt muscles or anything like that, so I should win some kind of extra-strength-humility brownie points, no?)
The photo crystallizes for some reason some essence of myself that would otherwise remain largely...elusive.
The year is 1983. I'm seven years old, relaxing on a lounge chair beside the pool at the Aladdin Inn in Daytona Beach, Florida. I'm a wearing a Pac-Man visor and intently reading the novelization of SUPERMAN III.
Am I still that kid?
I think so.
Or he's still me.
More or less.
How do we stay true to that seven year old that dwells within us?
Which begs the question: Scott, IS there, in fact, a seven year old version of ourselves dwelling within us?
Um, I don't know.
I'd like to think so. I'd like to hope so.
I don't know why. I guess it has to do with what I like to call 'the continuum of self'. (That's kinda sorta a lie. I don't really like to call it 'the continuum of the self', this idea, because I just made UP the idea, but if I ever DID like to call this idea something, that's what I would call it. So it's not that much of a lie after all. Whew.)
How much can we change our identity? How does our self change along with it? When we say: "Oh, yes, I know ______", what does that truly mean?
You may find this simply an intellectual exercise of splitting hairs, and it most certainly is that, but I think who we are, who we THINK we are, and who OTHERS think we are constitutes some of the fundamental, I don't know, STUFF of existence.
Are you the same person you were yesterday? No, of course not. You might have told your boyfriend to fuck off, or perhaps you lost your job. Something inside of you shifted. And so your own concept of 'self' shifted, too. ("That's not like me," you said.) We confuse ourselves when we do things that don't match up to our own and our peers' conceptions of our authentic being.
An interesting question to pose from lovely, scenic Cambodia, where Buddhism is the national religion, a religion that more less advocates, in its extreme forms, an eradication of the self altogether.
Most of the expats living and working over here are well are on their way to that eradication of the self, because many of them are out and out loonies. (Present company absolutely included.) More than a few are alcoholic, hedonistic drug-users who go completely, irrevocably off the freaking rails. Ten dollar prostitutes. Five dollar cocaine. After two weeks of this, you have either entered heaven or hell, depending on your morality. Whoever these 'fun' lovers were 'back home' doesn't apply to their current manifestation.
Which brings me back to my original point. (And if it doesn't exactly bring me back very logically or eloquently, well, too bad, it's my blog and I can go where I want to! And cry if I want to...)
I don't think the dudes over here who are snorting coke and injecting whatever it is they like to inject are thinking about their nine year old selves opinion of their current selves. Not that they should be. We change and evolve, and we can't hold on to childhood, or who we used to be.
Still.
DO we change? There's a great British documentary series by director Michael Apted that has traced a series of British school children over the past forty years. The first film was called 7-UP, the next 14 UP, the next 21 UP, etc. (I think 49 UP comes out next year.) Every seven years the camera crews come back into these people's lives, and we get to compare who they are to who they were. Revelatory, astonishing, frightening, marvellous stuff. Some people change every seven years completely and totally; others are visibly, unequivocally the same people they were at seven -- more or less.
Maybe that's the only way we can quantify how we age, by judging whether we are 'more' like we were at seven or 'less' like we were at seven. A matter of degrees, I suppose.
Could be useful. Occasionally, when we're questioning our judgement, our worth as a human, to think what our seven year old self would think of our current actions.
Then you'd have a choice: Either tell the seven year old to shut the hell up and go back to reading SUPERMAN III by the pool, or listen to his thoughts on the matter.
What you hear could be...transformative.
More or less.
(Boy, does that sound egotistical or what. But it's a picture from my childhood, not some badly lit, vaguely obscene Polaroid where I'm flexing my butt muscles or anything like that, so I should win some kind of extra-strength-humility brownie points, no?)
The photo crystallizes for some reason some essence of myself that would otherwise remain largely...elusive.
The year is 1983. I'm seven years old, relaxing on a lounge chair beside the pool at the Aladdin Inn in Daytona Beach, Florida. I'm a wearing a Pac-Man visor and intently reading the novelization of SUPERMAN III.
Am I still that kid?
I think so.
Or he's still me.
More or less.
How do we stay true to that seven year old that dwells within us?
Which begs the question: Scott, IS there, in fact, a seven year old version of ourselves dwelling within us?
Um, I don't know.
I'd like to think so. I'd like to hope so.
I don't know why. I guess it has to do with what I like to call 'the continuum of self'. (That's kinda sorta a lie. I don't really like to call it 'the continuum of the self', this idea, because I just made UP the idea, but if I ever DID like to call this idea something, that's what I would call it. So it's not that much of a lie after all. Whew.)
How much can we change our identity? How does our self change along with it? When we say: "Oh, yes, I know ______", what does that truly mean?
You may find this simply an intellectual exercise of splitting hairs, and it most certainly is that, but I think who we are, who we THINK we are, and who OTHERS think we are constitutes some of the fundamental, I don't know, STUFF of existence.
Are you the same person you were yesterday? No, of course not. You might have told your boyfriend to fuck off, or perhaps you lost your job. Something inside of you shifted. And so your own concept of 'self' shifted, too. ("That's not like me," you said.) We confuse ourselves when we do things that don't match up to our own and our peers' conceptions of our authentic being.
An interesting question to pose from lovely, scenic Cambodia, where Buddhism is the national religion, a religion that more less advocates, in its extreme forms, an eradication of the self altogether.
Most of the expats living and working over here are well are on their way to that eradication of the self, because many of them are out and out loonies. (Present company absolutely included.) More than a few are alcoholic, hedonistic drug-users who go completely, irrevocably off the freaking rails. Ten dollar prostitutes. Five dollar cocaine. After two weeks of this, you have either entered heaven or hell, depending on your morality. Whoever these 'fun' lovers were 'back home' doesn't apply to their current manifestation.
Which brings me back to my original point. (And if it doesn't exactly bring me back very logically or eloquently, well, too bad, it's my blog and I can go where I want to! And cry if I want to...)
I don't think the dudes over here who are snorting coke and injecting whatever it is they like to inject are thinking about their nine year old selves opinion of their current selves. Not that they should be. We change and evolve, and we can't hold on to childhood, or who we used to be.
Still.
DO we change? There's a great British documentary series by director Michael Apted that has traced a series of British school children over the past forty years. The first film was called 7-UP, the next 14 UP, the next 21 UP, etc. (I think 49 UP comes out next year.) Every seven years the camera crews come back into these people's lives, and we get to compare who they are to who they were. Revelatory, astonishing, frightening, marvellous stuff. Some people change every seven years completely and totally; others are visibly, unequivocally the same people they were at seven -- more or less.
Maybe that's the only way we can quantify how we age, by judging whether we are 'more' like we were at seven or 'less' like we were at seven. A matter of degrees, I suppose.
Could be useful. Occasionally, when we're questioning our judgement, our worth as a human, to think what our seven year old self would think of our current actions.
Then you'd have a choice: Either tell the seven year old to shut the hell up and go back to reading SUPERMAN III by the pool, or listen to his thoughts on the matter.
What you hear could be...transformative.
More or less.
Thursday, May 12, 2005
THANK YOU (YES, YOU), BUT PLEASE REMAIN FULLY CLOTHED
Who are you, anyways?
The strange thing about me writing this blog and you reading this blog is that we are separated by distance and time. If I'm writing this in Cambodia at twelve noon, it's about twelve midnight (the day before) back in Canada. So my midday is your end-of-day. And yet somehow the message skyrockets across the globe and onto your screen. And the ' you' who I'm writing this to remains unknown to me.
But the mystery is deeper than that, isn't it? It has to do with the actual person writing this, and the actual person reading it. This is the 'online' me, as opposed to the 'you' that is online. There's a difference. What I know of you: Nothing. What you know of me: My words. And nothing but. (Unless, of course, you actually know me, in real life.)
That's cool. That's as it should be, in some ways, that mystery. What I like about reading is that it allows you, practically demands you to become co-conspirators with the author; it enables you to agree, disagree, accept or reject anything or everything that he/she writes, and you are using somebody else's words to create mental pictures in your mind. To build castles of ideas that may not have ever been constructed if you had not read the fundamental bricks and mortar of somebody else's ideas. And the author him/herself remains a forceful entity, yes, but completely ethereal. (And it's very bizarre to suddenly meet an author who've you read and absorbed for years and years. I've met John Irving and Norman Mailer and Joyce Carol Oates and Paul Auster and David Foster Wallace, and it's very strange to spend a morning reading one of their books, having your head filled with nothing but somebody else's thoughts, and then you find yourself greeting that same person hours later. It's bizarre. Not sure why, but it is. It's also always strange to read the thoughts of someone you know well. There's just such a disconnect between the reality of walking, breathing, spitting person and the eloquence of letters arranged in distinct patterns. Which is one of way saying: Don't be disappointed if you ever run into me, okay? And for those who know me, they know I disappoint them on a regular basis anyways, so they don't have their hopes up.)
Long story short, this is my way of saying that I truly appreciate all of those thousands upon thousands of people who read this blog on a regular basis. (Okay, okay so maybe there's not thousands of people reading this, no, but there are at least hundreds. Well, alright, hundreds might be pushing it, but there are dozens, at least. Fine, a handful, in any event. Ah shit, there's gotta be one?)
I guess you could say that this blog is divided between those people who know me who read it, and those who don't. Sometimes it's a little disconcerting to allow those voices inside of my head an outlet on this page; it's kind of like going to confession on a daily basis, only what I'm confessing is not necessarily sinful, and the people on the other side of the little-sliding-barrier aren't Catholic priests but anonymous cybersurfers.
Sometimes I try to picture whoever is reading this blog. Which means I'm trying to picture you, yes you, at this moment, now, in front of your screen. Perhaps you're sipping a Coke. Maybe you're waiting for the phone to ring, or killing time before C.S.I. starts. Or you could have stumbled onto this site accidentally, and are slowly, gradually nodding off even as I type these words. You might be in a three-piece suit or your jammies. You may be naked, for all I know. (If you are naked, for the love of all things holy, please, put on some clothes. It's nothing personal, it's just that this ain't that kind of blog. Unless I get numerous requests to make it into that kind of blog, of course. ) You may be getting ready to settle in for the night, or about to start your day. You might have just told your spouse 'I know, I know, I get it, you told me already a thousand times'. You could have just decided to get divorced. To get married. To buy the house. To ditch the plant in the living room. To run the bath. To change the diaper. To renew your subscription to Newsweek, but not Cosmo. A million mundane decisions, large and small, are going through your mind as you are reading this sentence -- and I'm privy to none of them.
But somehow we connect, despite the dissonance.
The anonymity of the web allows us to view different lives from alternative, somewhat skewed electronic angles. There is a lot that you don't know about me, and even more that I don't know about you. But for a few moments here and there each and every day I can ramble on about all the random things that I think about, and a few moments (hours, days, weeks) later, you can log on and read about it. (Even if you're nude.)
I'm still not sure what all this means. Does the world get bigger, because we can connect online, or does it contract, because we no longer feel the need to knock on our neighbour's door?
I'm not sure. But connections, however we make them, online or otherwise, are always, well, when you get right down to it, nice. Aren't they?
So:
Thank-you for dropping by.
(And, before you switch sites, if you remain unclothed, at least put on a housecoat, will you? Or a pair of slippers or something. I'm not saying you don't have a nice body, but still.)
The strange thing about me writing this blog and you reading this blog is that we are separated by distance and time. If I'm writing this in Cambodia at twelve noon, it's about twelve midnight (the day before) back in Canada. So my midday is your end-of-day. And yet somehow the message skyrockets across the globe and onto your screen. And the ' you' who I'm writing this to remains unknown to me.
But the mystery is deeper than that, isn't it? It has to do with the actual person writing this, and the actual person reading it. This is the 'online' me, as opposed to the 'you' that is online. There's a difference. What I know of you: Nothing. What you know of me: My words. And nothing but. (Unless, of course, you actually know me, in real life.)
That's cool. That's as it should be, in some ways, that mystery. What I like about reading is that it allows you, practically demands you to become co-conspirators with the author; it enables you to agree, disagree, accept or reject anything or everything that he/she writes, and you are using somebody else's words to create mental pictures in your mind. To build castles of ideas that may not have ever been constructed if you had not read the fundamental bricks and mortar of somebody else's ideas. And the author him/herself remains a forceful entity, yes, but completely ethereal. (And it's very bizarre to suddenly meet an author who've you read and absorbed for years and years. I've met John Irving and Norman Mailer and Joyce Carol Oates and Paul Auster and David Foster Wallace, and it's very strange to spend a morning reading one of their books, having your head filled with nothing but somebody else's thoughts, and then you find yourself greeting that same person hours later. It's bizarre. Not sure why, but it is. It's also always strange to read the thoughts of someone you know well. There's just such a disconnect between the reality of walking, breathing, spitting person and the eloquence of letters arranged in distinct patterns. Which is one of way saying: Don't be disappointed if you ever run into me, okay? And for those who know me, they know I disappoint them on a regular basis anyways, so they don't have their hopes up.)
Long story short, this is my way of saying that I truly appreciate all of those thousands upon thousands of people who read this blog on a regular basis. (Okay, okay so maybe there's not thousands of people reading this, no, but there are at least hundreds. Well, alright, hundreds might be pushing it, but there are dozens, at least. Fine, a handful, in any event. Ah shit, there's gotta be one?)
I guess you could say that this blog is divided between those people who know me who read it, and those who don't. Sometimes it's a little disconcerting to allow those voices inside of my head an outlet on this page; it's kind of like going to confession on a daily basis, only what I'm confessing is not necessarily sinful, and the people on the other side of the little-sliding-barrier aren't Catholic priests but anonymous cybersurfers.
Sometimes I try to picture whoever is reading this blog. Which means I'm trying to picture you, yes you, at this moment, now, in front of your screen. Perhaps you're sipping a Coke. Maybe you're waiting for the phone to ring, or killing time before C.S.I. starts. Or you could have stumbled onto this site accidentally, and are slowly, gradually nodding off even as I type these words. You might be in a three-piece suit or your jammies. You may be naked, for all I know. (If you are naked, for the love of all things holy, please, put on some clothes. It's nothing personal, it's just that this ain't that kind of blog. Unless I get numerous requests to make it into that kind of blog, of course. ) You may be getting ready to settle in for the night, or about to start your day. You might have just told your spouse 'I know, I know, I get it, you told me already a thousand times'. You could have just decided to get divorced. To get married. To buy the house. To ditch the plant in the living room. To run the bath. To change the diaper. To renew your subscription to Newsweek, but not Cosmo. A million mundane decisions, large and small, are going through your mind as you are reading this sentence -- and I'm privy to none of them.
But somehow we connect, despite the dissonance.
The anonymity of the web allows us to view different lives from alternative, somewhat skewed electronic angles. There is a lot that you don't know about me, and even more that I don't know about you. But for a few moments here and there each and every day I can ramble on about all the random things that I think about, and a few moments (hours, days, weeks) later, you can log on and read about it. (Even if you're nude.)
I'm still not sure what all this means. Does the world get bigger, because we can connect online, or does it contract, because we no longer feel the need to knock on our neighbour's door?
I'm not sure. But connections, however we make them, online or otherwise, are always, well, when you get right down to it, nice. Aren't they?
So:
Thank-you for dropping by.
(And, before you switch sites, if you remain unclothed, at least put on a housecoat, will you? Or a pair of slippers or something. I'm not saying you don't have a nice body, but still.)
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: WHY JAMIE FOXX AND DON KNOTTS DESERVE OUR RESPECT AND ADMIRATION
The prostitute played by Elizabeth Berkeley (of SAVED BY THE BELL and SHOWGIRLS fame, or infamy) in Oliver Stone's ANY GIVEN SUNDAY had it right -- there's something about his eyes.
Jamie Foxx's, that is.
The other night I watched ANY GIVEN SUNDAY for the sixth or seventh time, and it gets better with every viewing, denser, and Foxx's performance gets better, too. (You have to understand: I am an Oliver Stone nut. A whole other Stone post awaits, so you've been warned.)
There's a scene near the end of the film, right before the big game, where Al Pacino, playing football coach Tony D'Amato, gives his pre-game speech. And what a speech it is, the end-all, be-all of pre-game speeches. It is not about football, but about life. It is not about his team, but about himself. It is not about Pacino, but about Stone. It is heavy handed and over-the-top and wonderful. And there's a passage in the speech where Pacino talks about teamwork, about being there for one another, and the camera stays on Foxx's face, slowly, slowly tracking into his eyes, and his character, who throughout the film has been a loud-mouth, arrogant prick, changes; his character alters. We see it right before our eyes, and it's nothing magical, nothing tactical; we simply see a level of sudden compassion and understanding and emotion in Foxx's eyes that tells us everything we need to know.
Foxx is the real deal. He was brilliant in ANY GIVEN SUNDAY, and even more so in Will Smith's ALI. I thought he was great in Stone's flick; after seeing him play the middle-aged, overweight, black, Jewish, white-woman loving Bundini Brown in ALI, I thought to myself: My God, this man is an actor. He's not just a comedian, even though I don't really believe there's such a thing as being 'just' a comedian, as I explain below. This may sound ludicrous, but Foxx (real name Eric Bishop, from small town Texas), reminds me a little bit of DeNiro. Foxx does not play a persona; he plays a character, and becomes the character, and we believe it. Completely.
Then came RAY, of course, which I saw most of on DVD. ('Most of' because the film cut out near the end -- did he get his sight back?) The most remarkable thing about that performance was not the mimicry of the real musician, but the fact that Foxx pulled it off without the use of his most powerful asset -- his eyes.
Last night I watched one of Foxx's stand-up comedy specials taped in 2002, and the man is very, very funny. Not Eddie Murphy funny, but funny nevertheless. His impressions are unreal -- Shaq, Prince, Pacino. He is not afraid to diss his fellow black entertainers: Whitney Houston, Bobby Brown, and LL Cool J all come under fire. (His bit about LL Cool J is particularly funny, talking about how his co-star in ANY GIVEN SUNDAY didn't seem to realize that they were making a movie, not playing a real football game, and that the angry words Foxx was exchanging with him were based on a script, not reality.) Oh, and his rationale for why O.J. is guilty simply based on his body movements is hilarious. (Ask me about it sometime.)
Now, Foxx has very little in common with Don Knotts, but I have to give Knotts his proper props, given that he's been in the news lately, mostly because his home state of West Virginia is about to give him a star on their newly formed walk of fame. And if getting a star on the West Virginia Walk of Fame is not prime material for a blog, then what the hell is?
The thing is, both Foxx and Knotts are comedians. And understand me here: I love Don Knotts. I think his work on THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW, not to mention THREE'S COMPANY, is classic. It's real. It's honest and it's human.
Comedians like Foxx often become great dramatic actors because comedy is all about finding the truth of a situation. If something's real, we laugh. If it isn't, silence rules the room. But I don't think comedians should be relegated to the back room of actingdom. I think somebody like Don Knotts is sincerely, genuinely worthy of our admiration because when we laugh at his antics, at his eye-rolls, out his sheer ridiculous, we are laughing because he has struck something authentic within ourselves. When we laugh, we are connected to something outside of ourselves, and great comedians can provide that link. (Not to mention how much of my childhood was spent imitating Don Knotts as Mr.Furley doing his karate chops. As Jim Carrey once said: 'Imitation is the sincerest form of copying.' But it always brought a good laugh...)
So here's to Jamie Foxx and Don Knotts, unlikely partners in crime, separated by two comedic generations, but deserving of all the accolades that are coming their way. (You can debate amongst yourselves what's worth more: An Oscar or a West Virginian star.)
We look to comedians to provide a respite from the realities of, um, reality. And I have to say this: Whenever I see these two guys in action, I laugh. (And when I see Foxx do drama, I empathize.) I relate. When I see Knotts do his schtick, I'm reminded of the silliness inside of ourselves we so rarely allow out.
That may not sound like much to you, but in this short life of ours, a little bit of laughter, a little bit of empathy, can go a long, long way.
Jamie Foxx's, that is.
The other night I watched ANY GIVEN SUNDAY for the sixth or seventh time, and it gets better with every viewing, denser, and Foxx's performance gets better, too. (You have to understand: I am an Oliver Stone nut. A whole other Stone post awaits, so you've been warned.)
There's a scene near the end of the film, right before the big game, where Al Pacino, playing football coach Tony D'Amato, gives his pre-game speech. And what a speech it is, the end-all, be-all of pre-game speeches. It is not about football, but about life. It is not about his team, but about himself. It is not about Pacino, but about Stone. It is heavy handed and over-the-top and wonderful. And there's a passage in the speech where Pacino talks about teamwork, about being there for one another, and the camera stays on Foxx's face, slowly, slowly tracking into his eyes, and his character, who throughout the film has been a loud-mouth, arrogant prick, changes; his character alters. We see it right before our eyes, and it's nothing magical, nothing tactical; we simply see a level of sudden compassion and understanding and emotion in Foxx's eyes that tells us everything we need to know.
Foxx is the real deal. He was brilliant in ANY GIVEN SUNDAY, and even more so in Will Smith's ALI. I thought he was great in Stone's flick; after seeing him play the middle-aged, overweight, black, Jewish, white-woman loving Bundini Brown in ALI, I thought to myself: My God, this man is an actor. He's not just a comedian, even though I don't really believe there's such a thing as being 'just' a comedian, as I explain below. This may sound ludicrous, but Foxx (real name Eric Bishop, from small town Texas), reminds me a little bit of DeNiro. Foxx does not play a persona; he plays a character, and becomes the character, and we believe it. Completely.
Then came RAY, of course, which I saw most of on DVD. ('Most of' because the film cut out near the end -- did he get his sight back?) The most remarkable thing about that performance was not the mimicry of the real musician, but the fact that Foxx pulled it off without the use of his most powerful asset -- his eyes.
Last night I watched one of Foxx's stand-up comedy specials taped in 2002, and the man is very, very funny. Not Eddie Murphy funny, but funny nevertheless. His impressions are unreal -- Shaq, Prince, Pacino. He is not afraid to diss his fellow black entertainers: Whitney Houston, Bobby Brown, and LL Cool J all come under fire. (His bit about LL Cool J is particularly funny, talking about how his co-star in ANY GIVEN SUNDAY didn't seem to realize that they were making a movie, not playing a real football game, and that the angry words Foxx was exchanging with him were based on a script, not reality.) Oh, and his rationale for why O.J. is guilty simply based on his body movements is hilarious. (Ask me about it sometime.)
Now, Foxx has very little in common with Don Knotts, but I have to give Knotts his proper props, given that he's been in the news lately, mostly because his home state of West Virginia is about to give him a star on their newly formed walk of fame. And if getting a star on the West Virginia Walk of Fame is not prime material for a blog, then what the hell is?
The thing is, both Foxx and Knotts are comedians. And understand me here: I love Don Knotts. I think his work on THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW, not to mention THREE'S COMPANY, is classic. It's real. It's honest and it's human.
Comedians like Foxx often become great dramatic actors because comedy is all about finding the truth of a situation. If something's real, we laugh. If it isn't, silence rules the room. But I don't think comedians should be relegated to the back room of actingdom. I think somebody like Don Knotts is sincerely, genuinely worthy of our admiration because when we laugh at his antics, at his eye-rolls, out his sheer ridiculous, we are laughing because he has struck something authentic within ourselves. When we laugh, we are connected to something outside of ourselves, and great comedians can provide that link. (Not to mention how much of my childhood was spent imitating Don Knotts as Mr.Furley doing his karate chops. As Jim Carrey once said: 'Imitation is the sincerest form of copying.' But it always brought a good laugh...)
So here's to Jamie Foxx and Don Knotts, unlikely partners in crime, separated by two comedic generations, but deserving of all the accolades that are coming their way. (You can debate amongst yourselves what's worth more: An Oscar or a West Virginian star.)
We look to comedians to provide a respite from the realities of, um, reality. And I have to say this: Whenever I see these two guys in action, I laugh. (And when I see Foxx do drama, I empathize.) I relate. When I see Knotts do his schtick, I'm reminded of the silliness inside of ourselves we so rarely allow out.
That may not sound like much to you, but in this short life of ours, a little bit of laughter, a little bit of empathy, can go a long, long way.
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
THE EVIL OF TWO LESSERS
It's just so complicated, is what I'm saying. The whole thing. All of its aspects.
(For those that came late, I'm not talking about the theory of relativity or the two Darrens on BEWITCHED, although those two things right there are pretty complicated in and of themselves, and both concepts, the relativity one and the two Darrens one, screwed me up big time as a kid. I mean, you can't just switch the lead actor like that -- you can't. It's not fair. )
It's a very strange feeling indeed to wake up one day and take a look around and realize that you have not only gotten used to the idea of child labor, but you expect it, too.
The kids in front of the supermarket hawking papers. The children toiling behind their mother's cart as she goes round the city collecting garbage and tins, metal and refuse. The little tykes who diligently scrounge alongside their siblings through the endless black garbage bags that litter Phnom Penh's streets like wretched treasure chests torn asunder.
These are child laborers. They exist. They're authentic. It was an electric shock to my system to learn that these poor and desperate kids are not just random, flickering images of guilt designed for Jack Nicholson's epiphany in ABOUT SCHIMDT, or convenient emotional scapegoats broadcast every few months on PRIMETIME LIVE, or holograms of tsunami-like degradation glimpsed between brilliant, snow-white flashes of Katie Couric's Joker-like grin on the TODAY show. They are all around (if you care to look, know where to look), sleeping on the streets, shitting in the sewers, sniffing up glue. They are small and stunted, dirty and smelly, smiling and honest, these kids are, and I've seen them so much, so often over the last few years that I wonder if I truly recognize how absurdly tragic their endless situation truly is.
The realness of these kids and their plight are what make the concept of sweatshops such a difficult one to reconcile. Of course no rational human being wants children working ten hours a day in a factory designed to keep Kathie Lee Gifford in designer duds the rest of her life. (Then again, no rational supreme being would knowingly construct Kathie Lee Gifford in the first place, but that's a whole other post.) No sensible, sensitive adult could possibly advocate kids stuck inside in dark and gloomy factories that make Dickens'darkened hovels look like Romper Room.
And yet...
As I mentioned previously (for those who were taking a leak during the last few posts, or watching AMERICAN IDOL, or contemplating Proust, or ignoring your mother-in-law), Cambodia has recently had the supreme honor of being voted the 10th worst country to live in for children and women. Why? No drinkable water. No employment. Early death. You name it, Cambodia's got it.
Cambodian families are big. Lots of people. Lots of mouths to feed.
All too often, kids no older than five or six have to go off and earn some coin for their siblings and parents. If they don't, no one will eat. If they don't, terrible medicine can't be bought. It's sad and unfair, and it happens every day.
I have no answers. The great travel writer Pico Iyer said that the purpose of travel is not to find answers, but to find better questions.
I ask myself a lot of questions here. Some are random and silly, others are profound (to me, anyway). Most are in between.
Seeing kids work, out of school, selling you stuff, collecting trash, makes your heart break and your mind whirl. (They are also nicer kids than any you would ever want to meet back home. Cue the breaking heart; cue the whirling mind...) The kids I see outside the shops begging and working should, instead, be relaxing at home, should, instead, be kids -- playing video games, watching cartoons, farting on their little brothers' faces while holding their heads down with oversized cushions.
They shouldn't be outside, under the sun, wasting their lives away.
But they are. And their families prosper because of it. And a sweatshop, hideous as they are, would actually be a step up for most of these kids, and their families.
I'm not saying it's right. I'm not saying it's good. But living here has taught me that not only is it not a perfect world, it's not necessarily even a good one, let alone a fair one. Nine, ten hours a day under the hot sun, selling newspapers, or nine, ten hours a day in a sultry sweatshop, stitching clothes, is not much of a choice -- the evil of two lessers, I guess you could say.
The tragic thing is, in Cambodia, there usually isn't any choice at all.
(For those that came late, I'm not talking about the theory of relativity or the two Darrens on BEWITCHED, although those two things right there are pretty complicated in and of themselves, and both concepts, the relativity one and the two Darrens one, screwed me up big time as a kid. I mean, you can't just switch the lead actor like that -- you can't. It's not fair. )
It's a very strange feeling indeed to wake up one day and take a look around and realize that you have not only gotten used to the idea of child labor, but you expect it, too.
The kids in front of the supermarket hawking papers. The children toiling behind their mother's cart as she goes round the city collecting garbage and tins, metal and refuse. The little tykes who diligently scrounge alongside their siblings through the endless black garbage bags that litter Phnom Penh's streets like wretched treasure chests torn asunder.
These are child laborers. They exist. They're authentic. It was an electric shock to my system to learn that these poor and desperate kids are not just random, flickering images of guilt designed for Jack Nicholson's epiphany in ABOUT SCHIMDT, or convenient emotional scapegoats broadcast every few months on PRIMETIME LIVE, or holograms of tsunami-like degradation glimpsed between brilliant, snow-white flashes of Katie Couric's Joker-like grin on the TODAY show. They are all around (if you care to look, know where to look), sleeping on the streets, shitting in the sewers, sniffing up glue. They are small and stunted, dirty and smelly, smiling and honest, these kids are, and I've seen them so much, so often over the last few years that I wonder if I truly recognize how absurdly tragic their endless situation truly is.
The realness of these kids and their plight are what make the concept of sweatshops such a difficult one to reconcile. Of course no rational human being wants children working ten hours a day in a factory designed to keep Kathie Lee Gifford in designer duds the rest of her life. (Then again, no rational supreme being would knowingly construct Kathie Lee Gifford in the first place, but that's a whole other post.) No sensible, sensitive adult could possibly advocate kids stuck inside in dark and gloomy factories that make Dickens'darkened hovels look like Romper Room.
And yet...
As I mentioned previously (for those who were taking a leak during the last few posts, or watching AMERICAN IDOL, or contemplating Proust, or ignoring your mother-in-law), Cambodia has recently had the supreme honor of being voted the 10th worst country to live in for children and women. Why? No drinkable water. No employment. Early death. You name it, Cambodia's got it.
Cambodian families are big. Lots of people. Lots of mouths to feed.
All too often, kids no older than five or six have to go off and earn some coin for their siblings and parents. If they don't, no one will eat. If they don't, terrible medicine can't be bought. It's sad and unfair, and it happens every day.
I have no answers. The great travel writer Pico Iyer said that the purpose of travel is not to find answers, but to find better questions.
I ask myself a lot of questions here. Some are random and silly, others are profound (to me, anyway). Most are in between.
Seeing kids work, out of school, selling you stuff, collecting trash, makes your heart break and your mind whirl. (They are also nicer kids than any you would ever want to meet back home. Cue the breaking heart; cue the whirling mind...) The kids I see outside the shops begging and working should, instead, be relaxing at home, should, instead, be kids -- playing video games, watching cartoons, farting on their little brothers' faces while holding their heads down with oversized cushions.
They shouldn't be outside, under the sun, wasting their lives away.
But they are. And their families prosper because of it. And a sweatshop, hideous as they are, would actually be a step up for most of these kids, and their families.
I'm not saying it's right. I'm not saying it's good. But living here has taught me that not only is it not a perfect world, it's not necessarily even a good one, let alone a fair one. Nine, ten hours a day under the hot sun, selling newspapers, or nine, ten hours a day in a sultry sweatshop, stitching clothes, is not much of a choice -- the evil of two lessers, I guess you could say.
The tragic thing is, in Cambodia, there usually isn't any choice at all.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
REGRETS, WE (MEANING HUMANS)'VE HAD A FEW, BUT TOO FEW TO MENTION (IN THE WORDS OF SINATRA)
Imagine that!
An entire walkway, road, overpass or avenue devoted to you and you alone, but not to your charitable works, no, nor to that oh-so-memorable time you escorted not one, not two, but an entire cavalcade of little old ladies across the street (at rush hour no less), but, instead, these series of streets and landmarks would zero in on the occasions in life when you plain and simple messed up. Big time. Royally.
So we could have a little plaque on the swingsets at the park detailing how you, at age seven, pushed little Tommy Burns off of his ass and onto the ground just because you could. Just because it felt awesome to do so. Or we might be able to arrange for a water fountain to bear your name, inscribed in gold, because that was the place where you used to chuck your Budweiser cans and cigarette butts late at night after making out with your high school girlfriend behind the shrubbery. Or in the shrubbery. (Or even, god forbid, with the shrubbery?)
We always dedicate significant civil landmarks to those who have made a difference in the life of the city, the community, by god the world. Why not have little plaques simply to act as placeholders and reminders of how all too often we fuck things up?
The reason I suggest this suggestion, the reason why I bring it up, is because I'm steadily, intermittently polishing off a book by Ian Buruma called Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan. (The title makes it sound somewhat hideously boring, but it's not.) It's a serious of essays that chronicle how and in what fashion both Germany and Japan have dealt with their wartime legacies. Very interesting to see the similarities and differences between the two cultures. Especially interesting because Cambodia is very much a country that is still grappling with the Khmer Rouge era, still waiting for a trial that may (or may not, I fear) eventually arrive, while Canada is still trying to deal with trading Wayne Gretzky from the Oilers to the L.A. Kings back in '88.
But why should we put all the blame on countries? Countries are not independent of the citizens who compose their censuses. You can't just label this building over here as being 'bad', and that place over there as being the spot where such-and-such atrocity took place.
Let's bring it down to the human level and start with those ignorant folks who always chuck their rubbish where it shouldn't be chucked. We wouldn't have to wait twenty or forty years to collectively feel our guilt; we could subsidize a couple of off-duty security guards to patrol the streets, looking for rubbishers. (And hey, I was a security guard for awhile, and believe me, those boys love being in uniform -- they'd leap at the chance.) Let's grab a five year old who spits his wad of gum onto the crosswalk in front of his school, rub his face in it, draw up a reasonable facsimile of said face, and then post it right on the street. Instant shame and humiliation.
Japan and Germany, China and Cambodia have all contributed hideous atrocities; Canada, too, shoulders much of the blame for the world's ills. (Need I mention Celine Dion, Anne Murray or Alan Thicke?) But at a certain point one has to say: Yes, yes, I fucked up, we fucked up, we're sorry. Let's move on.
It's not easy to move on -- to forgive others their sins, and to forgive ourselves. But we can't walk through life looking back over our shoulder every five minutes, remembering and wallowing in the internal dread of days gone by. We have to tuck it away and refer to it every now and then to keep us humble and aware of our own frailty, rather than keep it looming before us week after week, a constant billboard advertising only our own unspeakable, yet human, regrets.
An entire walkway, road, overpass or avenue devoted to you and you alone, but not to your charitable works, no, nor to that oh-so-memorable time you escorted not one, not two, but an entire cavalcade of little old ladies across the street (at rush hour no less), but, instead, these series of streets and landmarks would zero in on the occasions in life when you plain and simple messed up. Big time. Royally.
So we could have a little plaque on the swingsets at the park detailing how you, at age seven, pushed little Tommy Burns off of his ass and onto the ground just because you could. Just because it felt awesome to do so. Or we might be able to arrange for a water fountain to bear your name, inscribed in gold, because that was the place where you used to chuck your Budweiser cans and cigarette butts late at night after making out with your high school girlfriend behind the shrubbery. Or in the shrubbery. (Or even, god forbid, with the shrubbery?)
We always dedicate significant civil landmarks to those who have made a difference in the life of the city, the community, by god the world. Why not have little plaques simply to act as placeholders and reminders of how all too often we fuck things up?
The reason I suggest this suggestion, the reason why I bring it up, is because I'm steadily, intermittently polishing off a book by Ian Buruma called Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan. (The title makes it sound somewhat hideously boring, but it's not.) It's a serious of essays that chronicle how and in what fashion both Germany and Japan have dealt with their wartime legacies. Very interesting to see the similarities and differences between the two cultures. Especially interesting because Cambodia is very much a country that is still grappling with the Khmer Rouge era, still waiting for a trial that may (or may not, I fear) eventually arrive, while Canada is still trying to deal with trading Wayne Gretzky from the Oilers to the L.A. Kings back in '88.
But why should we put all the blame on countries? Countries are not independent of the citizens who compose their censuses. You can't just label this building over here as being 'bad', and that place over there as being the spot where such-and-such atrocity took place.
Let's bring it down to the human level and start with those ignorant folks who always chuck their rubbish where it shouldn't be chucked. We wouldn't have to wait twenty or forty years to collectively feel our guilt; we could subsidize a couple of off-duty security guards to patrol the streets, looking for rubbishers. (And hey, I was a security guard for awhile, and believe me, those boys love being in uniform -- they'd leap at the chance.) Let's grab a five year old who spits his wad of gum onto the crosswalk in front of his school, rub his face in it, draw up a reasonable facsimile of said face, and then post it right on the street. Instant shame and humiliation.
Japan and Germany, China and Cambodia have all contributed hideous atrocities; Canada, too, shoulders much of the blame for the world's ills. (Need I mention Celine Dion, Anne Murray or Alan Thicke?) But at a certain point one has to say: Yes, yes, I fucked up, we fucked up, we're sorry. Let's move on.
It's not easy to move on -- to forgive others their sins, and to forgive ourselves. But we can't walk through life looking back over our shoulder every five minutes, remembering and wallowing in the internal dread of days gone by. We have to tuck it away and refer to it every now and then to keep us humble and aware of our own frailty, rather than keep it looming before us week after week, a constant billboard advertising only our own unspeakable, yet human, regrets.
Sunday, May 08, 2005
START THE MOVIE, ALREADY! or, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING OF THE WESTERN SOUL
For some reason or another I always seem to be restlessly scanning the Internet and devouring the newspapers for interesting or enlightening or even absurd topics to write about and think about, so my mind is always making arbitrary connections that I unreasonably demand achieve some sort of thematic synthesis. This week I found two interesting (?) tidbits:
1) Cambodia is now the tenth worst country in the entire world for women and children to live in. It made the bottom ten. Woo-hoo!
2) Some newspapers in New York are now showing the actual start times of movies, instead of the nominal times, meaning they will tell you that the flick starts at 9:00, yes, but it really starts at 9:23, when you subtract the multiple commercials and trailers that they usually require you to sit through. (Full disclosure: I'm not sure if I used the word 'nominal' correctly in the above sentence. Just had to let you know that.)
What strikes me is simply the, I don't know, gap that exists between those two factoids of information.
In Cambodia, the majority of people don't even have healthy drinking water. They don't have proper medicine. They don't have jacksquat. Most folks here live in tiny villages where the infant mortality rate is disgustingly, astonishingly high. (And, as someone much smarter than me pointed out, think about what that does to a small community, to have a significant portion of newborns die on a regular basis. Think what that ambience of death adds to a neighbourhood. Think of the hope and dread intertwined on a weekly basis.)
And then we can contrast that with the western world, where people are so pissed off at sitting through stupid previews and idiotic commercials that they've got fed up with it all and demanded that they know when the actual movie starts, goddamnit it all.
Now, don't get me wrong. (Wow, what a weird phrase that is -- ' don't get me wrong'. We never say 'get me right', do we? So, I'll try and stop saying it in the future.) I think it's a good idea to list the real show-times in the paper; I'm all for it. It's convenient and considerate for all consumers.
It's just...
It has something to do with our ever-rising scale of expectations. (And by 'our' I'm referring to humans, although I'm sure it's probably the same for Vulcans, Klingons, possibly even hobbits.) We get water, and then want something sweeter, so we make Coke. We get Coke, and then we realize that all that sugar is not that good for us, so we make Diet Coke. We get grain and rice, and then we realize that that's not all that delicious, so we invent pizza and hot fudge sundaes. We get movie theatres, and then we get pissed off that we actually have to sit through an entire fifteen minutes of product placement.
I don't know if it's healthy or scary to want more, more, more. It's a human instinct, of that I'm sure, but this escalation of desire can become somewhat startling if you ponder it too much.
Last week I was at my old school, talking to one of my old students, one of my first students, a monk. Nice guy. About to graduate with his degree. Will probably stay on as a monk, though, because he likes it, likes the spiritual discipline, even though it's hard. Two meals a day, both before the advent of the afternoon. No alcohol. This dude has nothing but the robes on his back and the knowledge and his head, but he seems happy and content. He's learning. I jokingly said to him that I'm feeling old, being almost thirty, and he smiled and remarked that he was older than me, almost thirty-four, I think he said. And then I remembered that the life expectancy for Cambodians is only, like, 52 or something. So, theoretically, if he follows the norm, he would be eighteen years from death. (It's like me being already sixty or something.)
So, I don't know. Perhaps I'm overdramatizing things. Perhaps my tangents are remaining unconnected.
But it seems that we worry about the small things too much -- the movie times and the start time and which Idol judge is sleeping with which contestant. (I think Paula is probably guilty, by the way.) We sometimes allow those minor slices of life to all too often become the content of life. We let them add up to something that is even smaller than the sum of its parts. And I think we become somehow smaller, too.
1) Cambodia is now the tenth worst country in the entire world for women and children to live in. It made the bottom ten. Woo-hoo!
2) Some newspapers in New York are now showing the actual start times of movies, instead of the nominal times, meaning they will tell you that the flick starts at 9:00, yes, but it really starts at 9:23, when you subtract the multiple commercials and trailers that they usually require you to sit through. (Full disclosure: I'm not sure if I used the word 'nominal' correctly in the above sentence. Just had to let you know that.)
What strikes me is simply the, I don't know, gap that exists between those two factoids of information.
In Cambodia, the majority of people don't even have healthy drinking water. They don't have proper medicine. They don't have jacksquat. Most folks here live in tiny villages where the infant mortality rate is disgustingly, astonishingly high. (And, as someone much smarter than me pointed out, think about what that does to a small community, to have a significant portion of newborns die on a regular basis. Think what that ambience of death adds to a neighbourhood. Think of the hope and dread intertwined on a weekly basis.)
And then we can contrast that with the western world, where people are so pissed off at sitting through stupid previews and idiotic commercials that they've got fed up with it all and demanded that they know when the actual movie starts, goddamnit it all.
Now, don't get me wrong. (Wow, what a weird phrase that is -- ' don't get me wrong'. We never say 'get me right', do we? So, I'll try and stop saying it in the future.) I think it's a good idea to list the real show-times in the paper; I'm all for it. It's convenient and considerate for all consumers.
It's just...
It has something to do with our ever-rising scale of expectations. (And by 'our' I'm referring to humans, although I'm sure it's probably the same for Vulcans, Klingons, possibly even hobbits.) We get water, and then want something sweeter, so we make Coke. We get Coke, and then we realize that all that sugar is not that good for us, so we make Diet Coke. We get grain and rice, and then we realize that that's not all that delicious, so we invent pizza and hot fudge sundaes. We get movie theatres, and then we get pissed off that we actually have to sit through an entire fifteen minutes of product placement.
I don't know if it's healthy or scary to want more, more, more. It's a human instinct, of that I'm sure, but this escalation of desire can become somewhat startling if you ponder it too much.
Last week I was at my old school, talking to one of my old students, one of my first students, a monk. Nice guy. About to graduate with his degree. Will probably stay on as a monk, though, because he likes it, likes the spiritual discipline, even though it's hard. Two meals a day, both before the advent of the afternoon. No alcohol. This dude has nothing but the robes on his back and the knowledge and his head, but he seems happy and content. He's learning. I jokingly said to him that I'm feeling old, being almost thirty, and he smiled and remarked that he was older than me, almost thirty-four, I think he said. And then I remembered that the life expectancy for Cambodians is only, like, 52 or something. So, theoretically, if he follows the norm, he would be eighteen years from death. (It's like me being already sixty or something.)
So, I don't know. Perhaps I'm overdramatizing things. Perhaps my tangents are remaining unconnected.
But it seems that we worry about the small things too much -- the movie times and the start time and which Idol judge is sleeping with which contestant. (I think Paula is probably guilty, by the way.) We sometimes allow those minor slices of life to all too often become the content of life. We let them add up to something that is even smaller than the sum of its parts. And I think we become somehow smaller, too.
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