She’s never going to whisper in my fucking ear ever again.

A couple years back, this was probably around 2003 or so, I did something I had never done before and, as near as I can remember never did again: I bought a DVD of a movie I hadn’t seen. I honestly don’t remember why I did it; my friends hadn’t exactly talked it up to me. The reviews were good, sure, but who drops 18 bucks on reviews and a hope?

Still, I bought the movie on a Friday night and took it home to watch. I popped it in the DVD player, collected the remote and my cigarettes, and turned off the living room lights. This is something else – turning off the lights to watch a movie – I had never done before and have never done since.

I lit a cigarette and pressed PLAY on the remote.

After the first scene I stood up, pressed PAUSE on the front of the DVD player, and turned the lights back on.

Once the lights were back on I sat on the edge of the recliner, trying to light another cigarette with shaking hands, looking around for the remote that had been sitting on my leg for the first scene of the movie. It was in the middle of the living room floor. It must have flown there when, at the end of the first scene, I literally jumped up in my chair and screamed louder than I ever have or ever will.

The remote laid there on the living room carpet, that terrible carpet we had back then before I tore it out in a fit of interior design rage, it laid there taunting me, DARING me, to turn the movie back on. I’d seen eight minutes of it and was more scared than I had been in my entire life. I sat there staring at the remote and just before I gathered up enough courage to pick it up and restart the movie I caught a glimpse of the light switch next to the TV and thought, it’s going to be a LONG time before I’m alone in the dark again.

This is how you take a big, mean, chain-smoking bastard and turn him into a mass of quivering baby food:

You sit him in the dark and show him The Ring.

Now, understand, I am a person who loves horror movies. Okay, let me clarify that a little. I love GOOD horror movies. And I’m not talking about “Friday the 13th Part XXXIV: Jason Goes to Tulsa” shit. Any idiot with a camera who knows what a foreground is can make that kind of horror movie. Funky death effects aside movies like that require no skill to make. I’m talking serious, honest-to-god movies that also happen to be really, really scary. We are talking about The Exorcist here. Halloween. Alien. Jaws. The really good stuff. I love movies like this. I LOVE them.

My love for them is, frankly, a little masochistic. I have an extensive series of clinical, left-brain blockages set up precisely so that I don’t immerse myself so much in whatever entertainment I’m consuming that I fall headfirst into it, but a really well-constructed horror movie blows right past all of that. I go from snobbish, detached film school intellectual to covering my eyes and whispering to the characters faster than Superman changes clothes. I am powerless against a really good horror flick, and yet I still repeatedly subject myself to them.

(Interesting side note: the only other genre that sucks me in that quickly and that thoroughly? Romances. c.f. my abiding love of Casablanca, The English Patient, Atonement, et al).

Before I saw The Ring I had, of course, been well and fully briefed on the leading lights of the horror genre. Back in college I was “the movie guy” and Halloween with me and my friends would routinely involve me bringing over large stacks of VHS horror movies and small bunches of us sitting around getting blitzed while scaring the crap out of ourselves. So I’d been there and I had most assuredly done that. I had seen The Exorcist in the theatre. I had gone into Blair Witch with an open mind and gotten a damn good scare for my trouble. I had believed the woman I was in love with at the time when she told me she wanted to watch Halloween (I had to sit on the floor in her dorm and, I am not making this up, she spent the entire movie kicking me in the back of the head). I had suffered plenty of mental damage and a bit of physical damage in the service of my horror movie jones.

As I sat down to watch The Ring – with the lights out, which to this day I cannot explain – I figured that I had already been through the proverbial wringer when it came to horror movies.

Oh, sweet merciful lord, how wrong I was.

After I spent a few minutes calming myself down I picked up the remote, took a deep breath, and started the movie again. I was immediately struck by how… I suppose the word is “careful” the filmmaking was. The first scene is scary as fucking hell, even years on and having seen it multiple times when I watched it this week I still jumped at the right spots, though not as high. After that, though, Verbinski works very hard to construct what for lack of a better word is a very “real” movie: single mother, precocious kid, grieving friends, broken relationships, everyone trying to come to terms with the death of a teenage girl in a depressing, rain-drenched landscape.

Once you get past that first scene things move along pretty swimmingly, actually, until the first time we see the tape.

The tape isn’t that scary in and of itself. It’s off-putting and weird and vaguely unpleasant but there’s nothing on there to make you scream. But watching it along with Rachel – and you do just watch the tape with the character, there’s only one cut away from it the first time it’s shown and it’s at a perfect spot – a sense of foreboding builds and builds and builds, and Rachel’s reaction just makes it somehow worse.

The worst part, though, is that you KNOW that phone is going to ring and you KNOW there’s going to be that horrible voice, and the anticipation of that happening is FAR worse than the actual event – face it, it’s a phone ringing – but through some genius alchemy Verbinksi holds that moment for JUST long enough that when it happens you still jump out of your seat. Because you are weak and while you are sitting in front of The Ring, Gore Verbinski is God. Worse, he is an all-powerful god of fear and you have severely displeased him.

Once you’ve seen the tape the movie proceeds as… I don’t want to say a “standard” horror movie, because it isn’t, if there even is such a thing. But it follows a known arc, at the very least. Mysterious happenings abound, Rachel investigates, things escalate from mysterious to dangerous to horrifying, the stakes are raised, questions are asked and answered, and eventually there is a horror- and emotion-packed climax. Make no mistake, though – everything up to this point has been executed with nothing less than stunning precision.

This is just how incredibly well-made the movie is:

Sitting there watching it, about halfway through the movie – around when Rachel arrives on the island – my phone rang. For the second time in less than two hours I literally JUMPED out of the recliner and started screaming incoherently. It wasn’t just the shock of the noise – I was absolutely certain that a ringing phone meant I WAS GOING TO DIE.

I clumsily grabbed the remote and paused the film, then grabbed a quick look at the display on my cell. It was my friend Chris.

I flipped open the phone and started screaming.

“YOU MOTHERFUCKER! OH MY GOD YOU MOTHERFUCKER! YOU SCARED THE LIVING FUCK OUT OF ME! YOU FUCKING MOTHERFUCKER OH MY FUCKING GOD!”

Chris said, “what? What did I do?”

I sputtered, “you… you… you fucking CALLED me! Oh my god I thought I was going to fucking DIE!”

Chris said, “what the hell are you doing?”

Starting to calm down, I said, “I’m watching The Ring.”

Chris said, “oh, Jesus Christ, I’m sorry, I’m REALLY sorry.”

His contrition was genuine: he’d seen the movie.

It goes beyond precision, really. Everything in The Ring is note-perfect, and part of its brilliance is the way we get drawn into the quest along with Rachel. We carry along and experience with her the feeling that, after you watch the tape, the entire world is just increasingly WRONG and the movie becomes as much about setting reality right as it is saving herself. Still, though, it IS a horror movie, and once everything has been set in place the aforementioned climax has to happen, and there are scares and moments of swelling emotion and finally release, and when Rachel says “I want to go home,” you sit there, exhausted, and say to yourself “god DAMN that was a great fucking movie!”

But, and this is the true genius of The Ring, the movie doesn’t end there.

After what would be the climactic final battle of a lesser movie – hell, of a perfectly respectable movie – The Ring yet has manipulations profane and sublime in store. In what is supposed to be the happy denouement between casually estranged mother and son, finally united against a cruel world, when Aidan says “why did you do that” your stomach drops and your flesh starts to crawl and you realize that everything up to that moment has just been the movie playing with you, TOYING with you, and that what’s about to come is going to be worse than you could possibly imagine.

And oh GOD does it come, and oh GOD is it worse than your wildest nicotine patch nightmares. I’ve watched a great white shark terrorize Amity Island, I’ve watched Michael Myers stalk Laurie Strode, I’ve watched Regan McNeil defile a crucifix, and for however visceral and truly horrifying those things are (and they most assuredly are), none of them, and indeed nothing I’d ever seen before or have since since or will likely ever see again, none of them come close to the sheer, abject terror of the penultimate scene of The Ring. I spent the entire scene desperately trying to get away from what was on my television, trying to scramble up and over the back of the recliner, trying to look away, moaning, “no, no, no” over and over again, but I was fixed to the spot. I couldn’t get away. I couldn’t not look at it.

You can very easily get all film-school-literary-studies-major douchebag about The Ring, talk about Verbinski’s repetition of imagery and use of color, or talk about how it uses the supernatural to demonstrate the threat of technology or how it presents a case for the empowerment of women or one of a host of lit-crit theory crap, and you’d have fertile ground on which to plant your bullshit lit-crit douchebag arguments, and all those things are true. Verbinski goes out of his way to create a real, artistic, serious “literary” movie, and he succeeds, and all those things apply. But for all it’s artistic merit – and it is fucking well brimming with it – the bottom line on The Ring is that penultimate scene. It is the pure distillation of horror in movie form. And I don’t mean in terms of gore or violence or blood. There aren’t any. I mean just stark, basic, amygdala-shattering terror. It is the single most frightening thing I’ve ever seen on film.

And I couldn’t look away.

JLK

IM Fun: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

After perusing some of the Facebook reaction to the Phillies win in Game 1 of the NLDS, which was momentarily marred by a picture breakdown…

John: My favorite new idiotic Philadelphia sports fan behavior: complaining about Comcast’s inability to control solar flares.

Michael: People are complaining?

John: Oh yes.

John: “WTF Comcast, why is my picture screwed up? You suck!”

John: Well, Johnny, your picture is screwed up because sometimes giant nuclear explosions happen on the surface of the sun that send out enormous waves of radiation which momentarily disturb satellite signals.

Michael: Well WTF sun!

John: Exactly.

Michael: You think you’re so cool with nuclear explosions.

John: I know, what a bastard the sun is.

Michael: Like what does the sun actually do for us anyway?

John: Seriously. Like causing plants to create oxygen is such a big deal.

Michael: I know! F you photosynthesis!

John: And don’t even get me STARTED on the water cycle.

JLK

I’m all dressed up and ready to play.

When I got home from work yesterday I felt… not bad, not sick, but a little weird. Head felt a bit funny. Let’s say that systems were not operating at 100%. So I had an easy night planned. Sit around, watch some TV, get to bed. Nothing serious.

Early in the evening I’m fixing my dinner between catching up on DVR’d episodes of Bones when my father says, “hey, do you want to play Quizo tonight?”

Now Wednesday was normally the night of the Moron Quizo at Nick’s Roast Beef. We haven’t played there in a while and even though the Quizo is super-easy we usually have a good time. I start thinking, okay, I’ll only have a little bit of food now and eat at the bar… I’ll call Nick and Reg and Sabs, get the old team together… I can DVR Glee, and the Phillies game will be on at the bar… yeah, this sounds like a decent idea.

However, in what would later be revealed as a moment of great cosmic providence, instead of just agreeing, for some inexplicable reason I say, “where?”

My father says, “I don’t know the name of the place, it’s at 3rd and Chestnut.”

I think, what the fuck?

I say, “what the fuck?”

I don’t know anything about a Quizo at 3rd and Chestnut, and the thought of heading downtown with a headache is strike one against me going.

“The bar is owned by a Girard graduate,” my father says. “Fisher told me about it.” My father and Fisher both teach at Girard College.

“Let me get this straight,” I say. “You want me to go to a bar downtown, the name of which you don’t know, with you and FISHER, to play Quizo?”

“I’ll call Mister Fisher and see what I can learn about this Quizo.” While he dials the phone I realize that going to a bar with Fisher means we will likely be there until the middle of the night – strike two.

After he hangs up my dad says, “okay, the name of the bar is National Mechanics.”

When I hear that I flash back ten-plus years to a play I wrote in college. The play itself was remarkably wretched – I found the last remaining copy of it a couple months back and oh, god, it was so bad – but it had a running gag in it that the characters hung out in a bar called Cadillac Ranch that, instead of posters or sports memorabilia, hung used auto parts on the wall.

Give me a break, I was 20 years old and drunk.

Anyway, I remember this bit I wrote about a bar with the automotive décor and I think, surely someone hasn’t actually DONE this horrible thing.

I say to my father, “let me see what I can find out.”

I go upstairs and Google this place and learn that thankfully the bar is NOT what I had originally feared, that it’s just in some kind of historic building in Olde City called the National Mechanic’s building. I also learned as I perused the bar’s website that whoever wrote the site’s copy should be shot. “The space is alive, bursting with vibrancy and dynamism[…]” Whoever wrote that sentence, FUCKING KILL YOURSELF. Put the English language down before you hurt someone with it.

While trudging through the horrifying swamp of overwrought mediocrity that was the promo copy, I come across the information on the Quizo and read two words that hit me like a brick between the eyeballs:

Irish John.

Strike. Fucking. THREE.

I say, loudly enough to be heard downstairs, “oh HELL no!”

“What?” my father shouts.

“There is no fucking WAY I am going to an Irish John Quizo,” I shout back. This is the guy who did the Quizo at the Dark Horse before I did. His game is neither very good nor particularly pleasant.

“So you’re not going?”

“No,” I say. “I am fucking well not going.” Compared to an evening with my father and Fisher at an Irish John Quizo, sitting at home watching TV is a veritable orgasm.

So I stay home to watch TV and try to get rid of my nagging headache. The last few episodes of Bones on my DVR: watched. Special features on the DCAU Public Enemies: watched. Glee: watched. Life is good.

After Glee I turn on the Phillies game. They’re up 10-3. The Braves are losing. The Phillies are about to clinch their third straight pennant. Pretty damn sweet! I start hunting around my desk for my shoes – when the game is over I’m going to want to head down to Cottman and Frankford and see what’s going on. I start to mutter to myself: “god dammit, where are my fucking shoes… here somewhere… so much crap in this room… what the FUCK?” The last comes as I learn my shoes ended up being behind the toolbox under my desk, raising any number of questions, not the least of which is the recurring theme of “why do I still have this toolbox?”

I finally get my shoes on while Brad Lidge is warming up. A text message comes in: “Can Lidge blow a seven run lead?” I respond: “God let’s hope not.” I would legitimately feel bad for the guy. Charlie’s giving him a chance to get the out that will win the division, if he melts down there…

First pitch, ground ball to Ryan Howard, steps on the bag… clinch!

I actually jump up from my desk chair and put my arms up in the air and shout “woohoo!” like Homer. NL East Champions! Another baseball October! I grab my camera off my desk – I was going to use my phone to upload pics to Facebook, but I needed the camera for video – and as I cross the threshold from my bedroom to the hallway, perhaps 90 seconds after the Phillies have won the NL East, my phone rings. It’s my father.

I answer the phone. “Hello?”

“John,” my father says.

“Dad!” I shout.

He has called to celebrate the Phillies win, of course. He will say something like “I have pennant fever!” as he does after every single Phillies win. (Conversely, he will without fail say “I have lost pennant fever” after every single Phillies loss.) He will say something about the performance of players with one of the idiotic nicknames he and I use when talking about individual Phillies, something like “how about that play by Dangerous?” or “we call him Dobbsy!” or “clearly there will be No Questions Asked.” Possibly even “it’s a good thing Stumpy will be back for the playoffs” or “the Phillies are really going to miss Bleh in the postseason.” Maybe, just maybe, a sarcastic “Phillies suck!” like he would normally shout when they are losing. It will be another great all-American father-son baseball moment.

This is what my father says:

“On the Simpsons, who played the two bikers who abducted Marge?”

The Phillies won their third straight NL East less than two minutes ago and my father is calling me to cheat at Quizo.

I say, “are you fucking KIDDING ME? You call me NOW with shit?”

Now this is the point where a normal father would say, realizing that he is ruining an all-American father-son baseball moment, “sorry, you’re right, how about them Phils?”

MY father says, “John, we really need the answer.”

Now this is the point where a normal person would say, crushed by his father’s insensitivity to the all-American father-son baseball moment he is ruining, “how can you ask that at a time like this?”

-I- say, “John Goodman and Henry Winkler.”

JLK

Gold stars. Alone with his dead.

My desk is pretty awesome.

As bedroom furniture goes for the most part I am very lame. My bed is just a box spring and a mattress on a metal frame, my chest of drawers is a hideous old hand-me-down I can’t bring myself to get rid of, and my bookcases are Ikea standard issue. Until a few years ago my nightstand was – I am not making this up – an old Tandy XT monitor jammed into the top of a white milk crate. For the longest time I figured “oh, well, this monitor-stuck-in-a-milk-crate keeps my glasses and whatnot off the ground just as well as a fancy-schmancy ‘night table,’ so why shouldn’t I have this next to my bed? Oh, how droll and utilitarian and twentysomething I am!”

Of course, at some point when I was 28 or so I realized, as all intelligent folk do, that utilitarianism is a joke and John Stuart Mill is a fucking dickhead. I threw out the monitor-stroke-milk crate and resolved to keep my essentials on the corner of my desk. People like me who are largely blind without their glasses will recognize the need to place them, Leonard Shelby-like, in the same place every night. So now I keep my glasses and wallet and phone and whatnot on this one corner of my desk.

And this isn’t just any desk, mind you.

From the time I was approximately seven years old until about two years ago my desk was this ancient, mirror-topped mahogany behemoth I assume was scavenged from one of my mother’s dead relatives. This was how we obtained just about all of our furniture back then. Now bear in mind two important things at that time: 1) My parents were literally the age I am now, but with two kids and a mortgage living on the salary of a schoolteacher and a part-time optometrist. 2) In the entirety of my mother’s comically-abundant extended Irish family, by some cosmic demographic hiccup we were the ONLY new family with young kids. So every time someone died – which was quite often given the sheer quantity of family members – my parents would end up with their furniture because, “oh, John and Teresa need it.” This is why my father didn’t have a reliable car until he was 40 but we have three complete dining room sets, and why as a third-grader I was given a gigantic antique for a desk.

Over the next twenty years or so I would proceed to beat the living shit out of this desk, and when I started going back to school a couple years ago I realized I needed a place to both put my computer and do homework and that my desktop wasn’t big enough for that. (The lack of such realization perhaps explaining some of my poor academic performance beforehand.) I also realized that the mirror that was the top of my desk was sufficiently cracked and broken such that if I slipped while typing my hands would be sliced off at the wrists.

So with much sadness I disposed of my old desk. My sadness ended when I proceeded to replace it with something that looked like it came from the bridge of the JJ Abrams Enterprise. This desk DOES NOT FUCK AROUND. It is acres of polished glass held up by gleaming black metal in a way that at first glance seems to defy the laws of physics. It is awesomely L-shaped so that I have, essentially, an entire desk for my computer and another entire desk for homework and reading and whatnot, with a third smaller desk in between usually reserved for laptops of dubious purpose. It has got LEVELS: one side of it has an entire second story. My desk is what you would get if you force-fed mescaline to Frank Lloyd Wright and then chained him to a drafting table and held a gun to his head while shouting: “a desk, Frank, MAKE US A FUCKING DESK!”

At the moment a significant portion of it is covered with half-painted Space Marines and a forest of medicine bottles.

For the longest time I tried to keep some order to the medicine bottles, to maintain a sort of straight line that I could go down as I needed to, but as I grew more and more resentful of the fact that I take so many goddamn pills every semblance of order faded and now there are just bottles all over the place. For the back: Neurontin, Vicodin. For the liver: Vitamin E, Milkthistle, Ursodiol. For emergencies/special occasions: Dilaudid. Now that one, that’s special. Dilaudid is what your body turns morphine into. It is wicked bad juju. When I first got the prescription my pharmacist told me, “okay, basically, never take this stuff. It will erase the world.” Since then I’ve taken it three times when the pain in my back flared to a point where I was unable to successfully prosecute my day to day life. My pharmacist’s warnings were not inaccurate. I’m going to hold on to the rest of it and give the pills out as Christmas presents; the nicer you are to me between now and then the more you’ll get.

This weekend I was down with a cold and added some NyQuil to the menagerie. My love of NyQuil borders on abuse, and not even for its alcohol content: taken at half-dosage it is the only medicine I have ever found that actually relieves my symptoms when I have a cold, and as a sufferer of chronic anxious insomnia a full dose is one of the few things guaranteed to put me to sleep. At one point this Saturday I was sitting at my awesome desk, taking my NyQuil, and as I put the bottle down it landed next to the Dilaudid. I thought, “I wonder what would happen if I mixed them,” and then realized that thoughts like that bring me dangerously closer to being a character in a James Ellroy novel. The fact that I am currently reading a James Ellroy novel probably contributed to that realization, but I stuck with that line of thought for a little. Well, let’s think, what would that be like?

I mentally composed a list of pros and cons.

Pros: an authority figure of some sort (police, FBI, etc). Get to hobnob with interesting underworld types and make lots of money. Get to experiment with heretofore unknown combinations of drugs and alcohol. Get to have sex with (inexplicably lots of) interesting women. Free to regularly indulge darkest, basest, vilest desires. Witty yet realistic dialogue.

Cons: complicity in most heinous acts of the 20th century. Tendency for every associate to be evil scumbag. Utter moral bankruptcy.

As I sat there at my awesome desk, I felt the delicious warmth of red NyQuil seeping into my tissues and I thought, “tough call, tough call…”

JLK

My friends! I’m so glad you’re not dead!

I’ve been having some medical issues the last few months.

Now most people who are in situations like this and choose to write about it on the internet will turn their website into an ever-lengthening series of pathetic laments about how put upon they are and how difficult their lives are and how they cannot understand why a just and loving God would make them suffer so badly, but yet they will persevere and come out of their ordeal stronger than they were before.

Needless to say I am not going to be doing any of that.

I think we can all agree that the ways in which I am put upon are of my own making (large percentages of which could be avoided if I just stayed out of Atlantic City), that 99% of the difficulties in my life are caused by my inability to deal with other people (c.f. my 30th birthday), and that it is fairly self-evident why God has chosen to make me suffer (constant profanity, repeatedly murdering children on stage, sniggering jokes made in churches during friends’ weddings about God’s inability to successfully hit me with a lightning bolt). As for persevering and all, I mean, what’s the alternative? Not persevering? Giving up? Death? Fuck that noise. I have said repeatedly that I plan to live forever, so these malfunctions have to be met head-on and with maximum force.

Suffice it to say this will not become your average illness-diary-slash-ongoing-suicide-note website any time soon.

So, starting a couple months ago, I went to the doctor because I had felt kinda vaguely lousy for a while. She did the usual stuff doctors do and ordered some blood tests. A couple days later she called me back.

“You have diabetes,” she said.

“What? What? Diabetes? Really?” I asked. She rattled off some test results and a list of other specialists I needed to see. Still somewhat shellshocked, I said again, “diabetes, really?”

My doctor said, “weeeeeeeeeelllllllll…” and I remembered that this was the woman whose ministrations ten years ago put me in the CCU at Frankford-Torresdale for a week over what turned out to be an asthma attack.

My doctor is a bit of an alarmist.

After I got off the phone with my doctor I did what I always do when presented with a new problem: I spent hours reading every single thing about it I possibly could. After these hours I had learned that undiagnosed diabetes has very specific symptoms, and that I had none of them. My test results for diabetes were extremely borderline, and there were other tests that had some funky numbers as well.

I thought, maybe it’s time to talk to those other doctors.

One of the other doctors I saw was a gastroenterologist, Dr. Codella. My GI’s practice is interesting: it’s this huge office with lots of cool stuff in a very nice building, and as near as I can tell I am their only patient. I’ve been there four times now and I’ve never sat in the waiting room for more than 90 seconds, and I’ve never seen another person there who wasn’t an employee. It’s bizarre. The first time I got there, when they brought me in the back (before I even had a chance to sit in the waiting room) the nice nurse-reception-type-person said “okay, we’re going to sit you down with Doctor Kira first. She’ll take your vitals and do your history and stuff before you see Doctor Codella.”

From the start this is mind-blowing; at every other practice I’ve ever been to the nurse does all that stuff before you see the doctor. The nurse took me into an actual OFFICE – like with a desk and all, as my GI visit becomes increasingly unusual – and told me to have a seat before Dr. Kira shows up. I looked around and saw the nameplate on the desk, and it didn’t say “Doctor Jane Kira.” It said, “Doctor Kira…” and then a string of consonants that I recognized as an unpronounceable Eastern European name (a subject I am obviously well-versed in). As I was looking at the nameplate I thought, “oh, hey, Kira is her first name.” Then a few seconds later I heard someone come in behind me and turned to see a woman in a white lab coat, and I was suddenly gripped by terror. My brain screamed at me:

Don’t call her Major Kira, don’t call her Major Kira, don’t call her Major Kira, for god’s sake don’t call her Major Kira…

I got through without embarrassing myself and eventually saw the GI, who ordered a bunch of tests, including a liver biopsy. He explained to me that it was a simple procedure whereby a tiny needle took little bits of my liver out so they could check them under the microscope and make sure I didn’t have something dreadfully serious.

It has been noted many times that I am not good with needles. Like, REALLY not good with needles. So I did another omnivorous research expedition to learn what was involved in a liver biopsy so as to soothe my needle anxiety. I learned that a liver biopsy is a simple procedure the way assembling your kid’s bike on Christmas Eve is a simple procedure: it’s only simple if it’s what you do for a living. To any third party it is dangerously complex. A liver biopsy actually involves TWO needles: the one they take the samples with is fairly skinny, with a gauge roughly on par with a simple hoop earring, perhaps. There is, however, the matter of the needle they put that needle INSIDE to get at your liver in the first place. That needle is FUCKING HUGE. It has approximately the same width as a plastic straw. The next time you’re at McDonald’s or WaWa or wherever and you’re getting a drink, take a look at your straw. Now imagine someone taking that, sharpening it, and jabbing it into the side of your stomach.

Oh, this is not going to be good.

But wait, I was told when Jeanes called me to schedule the procedure. I would be given a sedative. Actually I would be given a local anesthetic AND a sedative.

“I’m, ah…” I said when I spoke to the nurse who called. “I’m REALLY not good with needles.”

She actually laughed at that. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You’ll be fine, trust me. It won’t hurt a bit.”

Now over the course of a more-than-average quantity of medical care in my life I have learned an important truth when doctors and nurses talk about pain.

If they tell you “this won’t hurt,” then 99% of the time it actually won’t. Aside from things like the minor pinch of a blood test needle or the mild pricks from the spur-thingy neurologists use to test your skin, if they say you won’t be in pain you can pretty much take their word for it. On the other hand, if a doctor says, “this will hurt a little bit,” you are in for a FUCKING WORLD OF PAIN. Doctors have no conception of something hurting “a little bit.” There is either zero pain or the worst pain in the history of the human race. Their perfidy is understandable if not forgivable; if they told the truth and said, “this procedure is necessary to keep you alive, but while it’s happening you will wish you were dead,” no one would ever undergo these (incredibly painful) procedures.

But the nurse assured me that my liver biopsy would in fact be pain free, and while skeptical I showed up with my anxiety cranked up to only 7 or 8 (the general medical procedure level). As they performed the stuff to get me ready the one nurse told me that she had to put in an IV so I could get the sedative.

She looked at me and very apologetically said, “this is going to hurt a little.”  She could tell I knew the code.

Fuck.

I gritted my teeth, shut my eyes as hard as I could and turned my head away (a bit redundant, that) and felt first a slight pinch and then an excruciating stabbing pain in my left hand.

FUCK!

The nurse said, “sorry, sorry,” and I could tell she actually meant it. That’s actually a bit reassuring – a lot of places you get the distinct impression they don’t give a damn if they hurt you or not.

A few minutes later we were about ready to begin and another nurse came over to the gurney I was on.

“Okay,” she said, “we’re going to give you the sedation. It’s a mix of Fentanyl and Versed. You’ll be awake for the procedure but… “ She paused for half a second and smiled. “But not really.”

“Uh, okay,” I said.

She said, “your biggest problem might be the local anesthetic. It can cause a burning sensation sometimes.”

As she injected something into my IV I said, “something that causes a burning sensation doesn’t sound like much of an anesthetic.”

One of the other nurses said from the other side of the room, “I know! I’ve been telling them that for years!”

The doctor came in, a nice man with a slight Ukranian accent. He introduced himself and explained what he was going to do. It sounded like someone giving directions to a party, but instead of “then you turn right on the Boulevard” it was “then we’re going to use a pneumatic needle to extract two slivers of tissue.”

I remember thinking, oh my god this is going to be fucking horrible.

The next thing I know the doctor was looking over me saying, “okay, you did great. Have fun at the Euros.”

“Wait, what?” I said. “Nothing’s happened.”

The doctor laughed, patted me on the shoulder, and walked away.

I said, “what the hell – “

The anesthesia nurse interrupted me. “You’re all done. Procedure’s over.” She started to unstrap the parts of me that were secured to the table and move away the equipment. “You’ve spent the last half hour babbling about soccer.”

“Are you sure?” I said as they were moving me onto one of those wheeled beds. “I don’t remember anything.”

The other nurse said, “oh yes. But you did great. Didn’t even flinch when the doc hit you with the big needle. Do you want to see the samples?”

Before I could say, “uh, not really,” the nurse held a small glass jar in front of my face with two little pink things floating in liquid in it. They looked kinda like tiny earthworms.

“Bits of your liver!” she said. No one should be that happy about bits of someone else’s liver.

Still, I had absolutely no memory of any of this. As they wheeled me out I pointed to my IV and said to the other nurse, “where can I get some of this stuff?”

She laughed. “Pretty good, huh?”

“Anything that can make me not remember having holes punched in my gut…” I said. “That has to have all KINDS of uses.”

The nurse laughed again. “Yeah,” she said. “You’re not the first person to say something like that.”

“What about the burning sensation?” I asked.

“You didn’t notice. You kept asking the doctor about hotels in Kiev,” the nurse said.

I looked at the IV. “Oh MAN I gotta get some of this stuff.”

When my test results came back it turns out there was some liver damage, but nothing earth-shattering. The entire treatment for my liver problems consists of diet changes, exercise, and taking a pill a couple times a day. So that’s, you know, good news.

Aside from that, as we all know because I am pretty vocal about it, I have the ongoing problem with my lower back. I had it under control for a while thanks to a procedure called a selective nerve root block, but then I went to Bethpage and fucked that right up, and then after that I somehow did SOMETHING to it, we still don’t know what, so I had to go and get the procedure again.

Here’s the deal: one of the discs in my lower back (L5S1, for those keeping score) got pushed out of whack a couple years ago. When I stand up it presses on the nerves in my lower back. In the intervening years since I first hurt it, at some point the disc actually ruptured a teensy bit, and now in addition to pressing on the nerves there is some juicy protein stuff that leaks out which is very bad for said nerves. This, I have since learned, produces what is called chemical radiculopathy (inflammation of the nerves from the stuff leaking out of the disc) in addition to the pre-existing mechanical radiculopathy (inflammation of the nerves from the disc pressing them up against my spine).

Put more simply: my back hurts. It hurts a lot. Eventually there is going to have to be surgery done on it, but we want to hold off on that as long as we possibly can – we’re talking, like, 5-10 years if possible. One of the things we can do to hold off major surgery is this nerve block thing. The procedure is less complicated than a liver biopsy, though it does unfortunately involve more needles.

Basically what they do is they get one needle full of some jacked-up corticosteroids (like super-steroids) and another needle full of some jacked-up painkillers, and they inject them both into my back right at the spot where the nerve and my spine and the disc come together. These things combine in some magical way that I do not entirely understand, but it works like a fucking charm.

Now for whatever reason the place I get this done doesn’t offer the whole sedative thing, so I get it with just a local anesthetic. This is a case where the phrase “local” is very, very limiting: the anesthetic numbs your skin and not a whole lot else, so while you don’t feel the pricks of all the needles as they pierce your skin, you do feel them (as something vaguely akin to a slightly-blunted stick) as they press into the inner portions of your spine. While not intolerable by any stretch the procedure is not at all pleasant. It hurts. Someone is sticking metal spikes into your spine. It’s not a day at the beach.

But I knew from the last time that the procedure wasn’t THAT bad – I’ve had things, like a cardiac catheterization, that were far worse – and I knew the relief for my back would be very quick in coming, so I signed up for it without hesitation.

Lying on the gurney yesterday, though, I can hear the doctor marking the spots on my back where he is going to do the injections, and moving around the various needles he was going to use, and my anxiety levels start to rise. In this specific situation that is extraordinarily bad, since if I panic and start hyperventilating or something, all the doctor’s marks are going to get thrown off, and suffice it to say you don’t want to be heaving up and down while someone is trying to stick needles into VERY precise locations near your spine (or, god forbid, whle they’re already in there).

But I am getting more and more anxious. I can feel my adrenaline kicking up. This is not good. Something has to be done. But there’s no sedatives. Fuck! I’m going to start convulsing and the doctor is going to accidentally jab me in the wrong place and I’ll be paralyzed and FUCKING HELL how many needles does this guy need and -

Then, suddenly, something pops unbidden to the front of my mind:

I will not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. I will face my fear. I will let it pass through me. And when my fear is gone only I will remain.

I think, fuck, might as well see if it works.

So I start thinking it over and over again. I will not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.

Now I don’t know if it actually works the way it’s supposed to or if concentrating my entire brain on one thing distracted me enough to calm down everything else, but I started to loosen up and got into a nice rhythm of “I will not fear” in my head and wasn’t worrying so much about the plethora of needles getting stuck in my back.

Through the local I can barely feel the doctor mark off another injection site when he stops and takes his hands away.

“John?” he asks.

“Yeah?”

He swings down sideways so his head is at my eye level. It’s dark in the room (so that he can better visualize my back and the x-rays) so all I can see are a pair of glasses.

My doctor says, “are you reciting the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear?”

I am too mortified to be impressed that my doctor knows the reference.

“I thought that was just in my head,” I say.

“Yeah,” my doctor shakes his head. “It’s not.”

JLK

CLASSIC: Baby make your move, step across the line.

This is a repost of something I wrote two websites ago; the infamous story of the Brad Meltzer book signing and its aftermath. It’s sort of like the X-Men Classic of the interwebs: taking old material, slapping a new Art Adams cover on it, and charging full price. Even though I don’t charge, and Art Adams got that restraining order. I may do this more often, since a lot of people (read: almost everyone) didn’t even know the old site existed, as I go through the archives and find stuff that is still decent.

Enjoy.

**********************************************************

The Brad Meltzer thing was tonight. There was, as I predicted, ridiculousness. It started before I left, even, and with my ever-growing penchant for seeing signs and omens in just about everything I should have realized just how awful things the things that were going to happen would be.

After a grueling day of playing poker, reading the Shepard script, and looking at headshots on the internet I got myself gussied up for the signing (i.e. I showered and put on a golf shirt). I had figured, “okay, it starts at 7, it’s in West Chester, so I want to leave about 6.”

At 5:59 I am bathed, dressed, and ready to roll.

Some of you have noticed my preflight countdown, one of the stranger manifestations of my particularly annoying brand of obsessive compulsive disorder. It’s something I do before I leave my house (or the theatre, or someone else’s house, or the bar, or wherever) to make sure I have everything. For years now I have said the same thing, while patting various portions of my anatomy:

“Wallet, phone, car keys, Winona.”

To elaborate, I check to make sure my wallet is in my back right pocket, phone in front left pocket, keys are in front right pocket, and that Winona (my leatherman) is on my right hip. Since my stint at the Death Star ended “iPod” has been added to the end of the list (in my front left pocket with the phone), since it’s oh-so-wonderful for long car rides.

I realize as I get to the end of the preflight, that I do not, in fact, have my iPod.

This begins a frantic scouring of all possible locations for my wayward music player. End tables in the living room, no dice. Desk, no dice. In the car, no dice. I even check the REALLY bad hotspots like the floor just under my bed (where books and DVDs go to die) and the refrigerator (a favorite hiding place of my car keys).

No iPod.

It is now 6:03, and I am perilously close to being late for the Meltzer thing.

I am perilously close to being LATE.

As we all know, in my mind being late is a Thing Which Must Not Happen, Lest The Universe Come To A Screeching Halt. So I sprint out the front door and just hop in my car and go, iPod-less.

This will later turn out to be a remarkably bad decision.

It is worth mentioning at this point that the radio in my car has been acting up a bit lately. Buttons and knobs sometimes choose not to function, or to work in ways not as they are meant to. On the way down, however, I just had it on NPR to listen to the late news and get traffic updates.

I left my house at 6:04. I made awesomely amazing time the whole way there arrived at the Chester County Book and Record Store at 6:59. When I say I’m never late, goddammit, I fucking mean it.

Of course, there was a mixup somewhere along the line, which is totally in no way Brad Meltzer’s fault, which is to say it was entirely Brad’s fault, and the signing didn’t actually start until 7:30. As I sit down and pull out my script to make notes while I wait, I think to myself that I could have spent a couple more minutes looking for the iPod, and that I didn’t have to drive quite so dangerously down 202 to get there (I actually went almost SEVEN MILES over the speed limit).

When the thing actually started, it went as these things go, generally – Brad got up, said some stuff, read from the book, answered questions, then sat and signed books for hours and hours. I was one of the last people in line. I handed my books to the bookstore lady to get opened and whatnot, all the time engrossed in an Andrew Vachss book I discovered there that I had, inexplicably, not read.

“John?” Brad says, reading the sticky note inside the first book.

“Uh, yeah,” I say, still reading my book. At that point it strikes me that it is incredibly rude to be reading a book while standing in front of his table, much less a book written by someone else.

“Oh, right,” I say as I put the book away. “I’m, uh, Johnny Bravo.”

He hovers the pen over the title page of The Book of Fate and looks up at me sharply. “You’re Johnny Bravo?”

“That’s me.”

“Oh, hell, I’ve been e-mailing you for years! How you doing, man?” he says, sticking his hand out to shake. “I sent you one last week, did you read it?”

The author of the #1 book on the New York Times Bestseller List is asking me if I got his e-mail. My mind will be consumed by how cool that is until slightly later in the night when I’m sitting in my car wishing I was dead.

“Yeah, I read it, thanks.”

“Good. It’s great to finally meet you.” He writes as much over his signature in one of the books I have handed him. “Thanks so much for coming out.”

Brad Meltzer is a good man.

Further pleasantries are exchanged, some small talk is made, and I go on my way. I try not to linger at these things; there are other people to get their stuff signed and have their moment with The Man. I pile into the car and I roll.

My plan at this point is to meet Mark at the Vegas Lounge and talk about how we’re going to find two forty-something actors in time to avoid a cattle call, which we hate. On 202, as I approach the merge with 76, two things happen:

1) I switch the radio in the car from NPR to the CD player, which holds Junior Jack’s “Trust It” album.

2) I see a sign which says “construction on I-76 approaching I-476. Expect delays.”

I think to myself, “well, they can’t possibly be doing construction at 10 o’clock on a Thursday night, and even if they are there can’t be that much of a problem.”

From 202 to the Blue Route on 76 is 5 miles. It took me more than forty minutes to drive it.

As I reach the very beginning of the traffic jam, the song on the radio goes from the end of track 3 (“Stupidisco”) to…

The beginning of track 3.

I fiddle with some buttons and nothing happens. Track forward, nothing. Track backward, nothing. Volume, nothing. Switch to radio from CD player, nothing. I figure that’s fine, I’ll just let the CD play.

As Stupidisco ends, it goes to…

The beginning of Stupidisco.

The radio will only play one track, and I am stuck in a monstrous traffic jam.

Oh, God.

After maybe ten minutes of inching forward at 0.34 miles an hour and listening to the same song at eardrum-shattering volume over and over again I just pop the face off the radio and sit there in silence. I also realize that I only have something like 3 cigarettes left, which does not bode well for an extended stay on the Schuylkill Expressway. .

That plan backfires when sitting in silence starts to drive me batshit crazy. The face of the radio goes back on. Junior Jack blares out the speakers at me. My car moves 4 feet.

Now I’m starting to take a decided interest in the dials on my dashboard. The speedometer certainly isn’t doing anything interesting – it isn’t doing anything, actually – but the engine temperature and gas gauges are becoming alarming.

As the temperature gauge inches up and the gas gauge inches down, I idly wonder what will happen if they intersect. Maybe it’ll be like crossing the streams. I consider every molecule in my body exploding at the speed of light and come to the conclusion that with traffic not moving and me subjected to the same song over and over again until the entropic heat death of the universe it might be an improvement. Even if you like it, there’s only so much Brazilian house music one guy can take.

It occurs to me that if the car catches fire or runs out of gas I will at least be able to stop listening to Stupidisco.

When I pass the exit for Gulph Mills I briefly consider getting off the highway, getting gas, letting my car cool down and waiting out the traffic. This idea is discarded as catastrophically idiotic because a) I getting off the highway when you don’t really know where you are is an exceptionally bad idea, b) doing so at night when you can’t see where you’re going is an even worse idea, and c) for fuck’s sake, if they’re actually doing construction now it’s not like I can wait it out.

So I sit there and slowly crawl forward. The left lane, at this point, is completely empty, the handy traffic signs having told everyone miles back that it’s a no-no. The gauges move toward total protonic reversal. Stupidisco assaults my ears. I realize that I forgot to set the DVR. The battery on my cell phone is dead.

I am officially in hell. After I die, this is what I will do for all eternity as penance for daring to ever have hope about anything. And, yeah, for killing a baby on stage, but mostly the hope thing.

I say out loud, “there aren’t enough cigarettes in the goddamned world for this,” although over Stupidisco even I don’t hear it.

When I finally get to the Blue Route there is no construction.

No construction whatsoever.

The left lane was apparently closed for the hell of it.

When I get home, I discover the iPod is sitting on my desk, under another copy of the Shepard script, and I begin to softly weep.

JLK

The suburbs have no charms to soothe the restless dreams of youth.

My car rocks.

And I don’t mean in that awesome, Slayer concert, “South Philly rocks WOOOOOO!” way. I mean in the unfortunate, “why is my car moving in ways I don’t tell it to?” way.

I first noticed this when my father was changing his shoes at the Scranton-Wilkes Barre International Airport yesterday. He was unloading his bags and suddenly the car was pole-axing up and down like it was on a schizophrenic hydraulic lift.

When this first started I couldn’t see what was going on (what with the trunk lid obscuring my rear windshield), so I leaned out my window to ascertain why my father was jumping up and down on my car like a trampoline.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I shouted.

“I’m changing my shoes!” he shouted back. We were coming from a funeral and he was changing from his dress shoes into more comfortable traveling shoes. He was sitting on the back bumper doing so. This caused the car to gyrate up and down quickly enough to make a lesser-constitutioned person seasick.

Made as I am of sturdier stuff all I did was sit in my car and say to myself, “that ain’t good.”

The next occurrence of the non-musical rocking came this afternoon at the supermarket. While loading my groceries into the trunk I nudged the car with my thigh. The car proceeded to lurch forward a solid 6 or 8 inches, and come back hard enough to hit me in the leg and make me stumble backwards.

Standing there, holding plastic bags full of cereal in my hands, I looked down at my car and said, “oh, this is gonna get worse before it gets better.”

I briefly worried that I was standing in a Pathmark parking lot talking to no one but, frankly, that would probably be cheaper to fix than my car.

As you have realized by now, I drove my father to the Scranton-Wilkes Barre International Airport yesterday. The best part about me driving my father to the Scranton-Wilkes Barre International Airport is that me driving him to the Scranton-Wilkes Barre International Airport was the LEAST ridiculous part of the entire endeavor.

Here is how something like this happens:

One of my father’s friends… let’s call him, say, “George”… has two bizarre passions: meticulously and intricately (some would say obsessively) planned vacations, and a burning desire to see the northern lights. On at least four occasions in the last fifteen years or so these two passions have collided, resulting in long road trips with his friends (my father and their mutual friend, let’s call him, say, “Rob”) up to the northernmost frontier of civilization to take in various cultural sights and witness the miracle that is the Aurora Borealis.

Note that the term “road trip” is used in a quite literal sense here. They DRIVE to these places. The first excursion was a massive, 27-day, 10-city extravaganza of visiting baseball stadia and sleeping outside in an effort to see the northern lights and a moose. It is my understanding that they saw an actual moose on their second adventure, a trip up to a place in Quebec called Chibougamou, which is quite literally the last town in Canada before one enters the frozen wasteland. No, seriously, look on a map. The road north stops in this place. There is nothing after it. This is where they saw a moose.

It is important to note at this point that on none of these trips have they actually seen the northern lights.

So earlier this summer my father got word that there was a new trip afoot – George was driving to Newfoundland to see the Maritimes (and, presumably, the aurora), and he wanted expected Rob and my father to join him.

Now my father has long since learned that joining in on the driving parts of these trips is Russian Roulette played with a Buick, so he has since the first such vacation gone with the policy of flying out to meet George and Rob in whatever bizarre locale they end up in. Since presumably none of you have ever been in a car with Rob believe me when I tell you this is one of the smartest policies ever devised. So my father set out to fly himself to Newfoundland from Philadelphia for less than a small fortune.

This is, as you might guess, more difficult than it might seem.

Eventually he found an airfare to St. John’s that didn’t run into four figures: flying out of Scranton-Wilkes Barre International Airport, with a change in Newark. This, by some quirk of airline scheduling, was fantastically cheaper than just flying out of Newark direct.

A second thing that it is important to note: at this point, my father thinks that Scranton-Wilkes Barre International Airport (located here) and Lehigh Valley International Airport (located here) are the same place.

A third thing it is important to note: my father is a geography teacher.

So he books this flight from Scranton-Wilkes Barre International Airport to Newfoundland without realizing that a) Scranton and Allentown are not, in fact, the same place, and b) he has agreed to drive back with George, so he can’t leave his car at the airport. This is where I come in. Several weeks ago he asked me to drive him to the Scranton airport and I – admittedly fuzzy on how far away it was – rather stupidly agreed.

Note to self: look at map before agreeing to drive people places.

Yesterday comes and after the funeral my father and I are hustling ourselves into the car to make the drive up there quickly enough to get him on his flight. I’m not that worried – even with whatever brouhaha one has to go through to fly internationally, I have looked it up and the average check-in waiting time at Scranton-Wilkes Barre International Airport is three minutes. My father spends the entire trip shouting about how much he loves the British accent on my GPS, and two hours later we follow its last instruction and pull into Scranton-Wilkes Barre International Airport.

This conversation happens:

My dad: Where do you think I check in?

Me: There’s only two doors.

My dad: Which one do you think is departures?

Me: There’s only two fucking doors!

My dad: BUT WHICH ONE -

Me: FLIP A GODDAMN COIN!

Now normally any car trip of significant length with my father will degenerate into shouting on both sides, but in this instance I think we both were a little shellshocked by the fact that the only terminal at Scranton-Wilkes Barre International Airport was smaller, and had fewer doors, than our house. As we got closer we saw that the first door you came to said “departures” over it. Another door, perhaps thirty feet away, said “Arrivals.” As near as I could tell from the glass-panel front of the building these doors both opened into the same room, making me wonder why they bothered delineating.

There was a question as to whether his flight would go off or not, so once he had changed his shoes my father asked me to hang around until he was sure it would leave.

Me: Look, even at this place I don’t think I can just sit here while you check in.

My dad: Then go wait in the parking lot.

Me: Screw that, I’m not paying to park while you check in.

My dad: Then just go around the block.

Me: Dad, there isn’t a block to go around. <pointing at a spot about 200 feet from the car> That’s the exit. You can see it from here.

My dad: FIND SOMEPLACE TO WAIT!

Me: FINE!

When I reached said exit, I could go straight to get back onto the highway or make a right into the great Scrantonian unknown. Figuring that I had my British GPS to get me out of any trouble, I made the right….

Into someone’s driveway.

The exit from the Scranton-Wilkes Barre International Airport leads directly onto a residential street, and if (like me) you are completely flabbergasted by this, momentarily lose your mind, and hold your right turn too long, you end up in some poor sod’s front driveway. I can still see the terminal from here. I extricated myself from this unlucky person’s property and drove around this neighborhood until I found a large open space where I could park the car and call my father.

Me: Well? What’s going on?

My dad: I don’t know.

Me: What do you mean you don’t know?

My dad: There isn’t a gate agent.

Me: What do you mean there isn’t a gate agent?

My dad: There’s a desk in this room, but there’s no one sitting at it. There’s no one here.

Me: What do you mean there… you know what, never mind.

My dad: This place is weird. Okay, there’s someone here, I think they might be -

Me: I’m going home.

My dad: Wait, what if my flight gets cancelled -

Me: Just CALL ME! How fucking far away do you think I’m going to get?

I hung up and started poking at my GPS until the “Go Home” button came up.

Before I got back on the Northeast Extension I pulled into a truck stop (an actual truck stop in a de facto city) to get something to drink. I decided a trip this bizarre required a souvenir. Just after the announcement that shower #2 was now open, I came upon the perfect item: a 128-ounce cup. It’s a giant piece of round plastic with a handle and a spill-proof lid. It is more akin to a flower pot than anything you would actually drink out of.

I took the cup and my actual sub-128 ounce drink to the counter, the cup still wrapped in plastic.

“You know you get a free fillup at the soda fountain, right?” the cashier said to me.

I stared at him for a second, then blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“The cup,” he said. “It comes with a complimentary fillup.”

I was buying this thing as a remembrance of a bizarre Saturday afternoon; the thought had honestly not occurred to me that a human would actually fill it with that much liquid and drink all of it, let alone soda, let alone actually drink that much soda. I began to contemplate what would happen if I actually drank 128 ounces of Mountain Dew in one sitting. Every scenario I could come up with ended in my immediate, if pleasurable, death.

“No, I, ah…” I said. “I’m good, thanks.”

JLK

It hurt so bad, just like I knew that it would.

So me and Shane were talking over GChat last night about the PGA Championship, when this bit of conversation happens:

Shane: Vick to the Eagles.

Me: That’s not funny.

Shane: ESPN just reported it.

My initial reaction, as evidenced by my Facebook status moments thereafter, was “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?” Michael Vick is a scumbag. He’s evil. We should bury him in the sand at low tide.

Then this morning I started reading the reactions, and near as I can tell they boil down to two basic ideas:

1) “Michael Vick is the spawn of the devil. His actions are unforgivable. Signing him is a morally bankrupt act.”

2) “Signing Michael Vick is just peachy. Have you ever eaten meat? Then you’re just as bad! He’s an okay guy, we should move on!”

Both of these positions are, to put it politely, ridiculous. If you hold either of them you are, to put it politely, fucking stupid.

Let’s get something straight: what Michael Vick did was horrifying. It was HORRIFYING. Don’t give me this crap about how we kill 900 trillion animals every day for food. The two are not remotely similar. Again, if you think slaughtering a cow for steaks and electrocuting a dog to death because it didn’t win a fight are the same thing, you are fucking stupid.

So, yes, this is a man who committed awful, despicable acts. There is no denying this. There is no minimizing it. Nothing you or I or anyone else says changes or lessens what he did. Him going to prison, in fact, doesn’t lessen what he did. It does not erase the stain on his soul, if there is such a thing. It means he was punished for it, yes, but that’s all it means. It doesn’t mitigate the act. Doing the time does not erase the crime.

However.

An awful lot of the vitriol directed at Vick and the Eagles the last 24 hours uses the word “unforgivable.” What Vick did was unforgivable. The Eagles signing him is unforgivable. Being a fan of an Eagles team with Vick on it is unforgivable.

It was reading comment after comment with that word “unforgivable” when I started to think that this whole Michael Vick thing had gone completely around the bend. It is not your place to forgive Michael Vick. It flat-out is not. You have no say in the matter. The only people who have the right or the standing to forgive him or not are his family and… well, what on Quantum Leap they used to call “God or fate or time or whatever.”

I kept reading the “unforgivable” screed over and over and I finally thought, you know what, that is a line of thinking I just cannot get behind.

I am a terrible, terrible Catholic, but I was still raised as one and the idea of an unpardonable act or an unforgivable person is anathema to those teachings. Hell, that’s not just us, that’s basically any Christian faith, or at least it should be. When you strip away all the window dressing – the rituals and doctrines and legends and everything else that has accreted over 2000 years – the lowest-common-denominator rock-bottom-line of Christianity, the most important thing that Jesus tried to teach us was “be good to each other.” That’s it. Everything else is bullshit. Everything else is just the story and the meaningless junk that we’ve constructed around it the last two millenia, but the core of the story, the moral is what really matters: be good to each other. Help each other. Stand up for one another. You are stronger together than you are apart.

Be good to each other.

We can’t say that we believe in redemption and then, when the chance comes, decide that we are unwilling to offer it. We don’t get to redeem people we admire. That’s why it’s a SECOND chance. That’s what redemption IS. It’s giving someone who made the wrong choices the chance to make the right ones. It’s making something good out of something bad. It is believing that none of us are too far gone that the rest of us shouldn’t at least try to turn them around.

As a society and as individual people, either we believe in forgiveness or we don’t. Either we believe in redemption or we don’t.

I can’t see the future. I don’t know if this will succeed. I don’t know if Michael Vick can be redeemed. But I know we have to try.

Welcome to Philadelphia, Michael.

Don’t fuck this up.

JLK

“If it weren’t for my horse…”

Now for another entry in our occasional series of things I can never un-hear. All are spoken by actual humans. Well, perhaps not humans.

Today’s gem once again comes from a group of mothers lunching at one of Newtown’s many delightful eateries. I didn’t catch what the entire conversation was about, but for one instant, almost as by design, all the other ambient sounds in the room dropped out so that I might clearly hear the oldest of the bunch say:

“So I saw that my next door neighbor was out in her yard wearing overalls and a nice white cap, and you know she has such a deep tan, so I said to her, ‘oh, you look just like a little landscaper!’”

I heard that and I thought, “wow, so that’s how you say horrifyingly racist things in public and get away with it.”

How you do that twice, actually, now that I think about it.

JLK

You can’t spell “Eto’o” without “TO”

From Samuel Eto’s press unveiling in Milan, on the issue of whether or not him and Jose are bestest buds:

http://tinyurl.com/m6jvy6

“‘ I never said those words that were attributed to me,’ he said. ‘There is also a tape which proves it and, in any case, that was after an intense game.’”

If you never said it and there’s a tape to prove it, why does it matter when you didn’t say it on tape?

When you consider the combination of how good he is with how badly Barca have been trying to get rid of him the last few years, Jesus fuck Eto’o must be one of the all-time great locker room cancers. Perhaps he should try plying his trade in Buffalo…

I hear Buffalo is lovely this time of… well… just this week, actually.

JLK