|
What's
Going On This Week? The
Film Blog – Friday, September 25th, 2009
The
Such great words. Such great ideas. Such a great
history. So many great personal memories—of
firecrackers, speeches, marching bands, football games,
cheerleaders. Great moments.
So sometimes I am saddened—never angered—because angry is
the choice one makes when hope has been displaced by futility.
I just wonder if we can return to being the
Yes. We’ve become mean.
Yes. We’ve become untied from the moorings of our belief
in one another despite color, creed, accent or political bend.
The
definition of debate now has to have the adjective of
“heated” in front of it to justify the nastiness that
occurs. Agreeing to
disagree has created a closet-disagreeability that
has recycled to our faces, leaving our national countenance with
a grimace instead of a smile.
Meanness.
What am I referring to? What causes meanness? ·
Meanness is anyone who believes that their opinion
does not need to be enhanced by further revelation. ·
Meanness is any group that thinks their rendition
of truth carries greater weight in the gigantic universe than
another. ·
Meanness is talking over the top of other people,
thinking you hear, but only assuming what you already know.
·
Meanness is finding a way to take something
practical and turn it into a personal attack. ·
Meanness is exhuming the skeletons in people’s
closets instead of helping them clean them out. ·
Meanness is the assumption of assuming. ·
Meanness is a follow-through on a story with the
goal of finding the juicy tidbit that shows weakness in our
species rather than potential. ·
Meanness is calling rumor truth. ·
Meanness is the belief that truth is merely a
rumor. ·
Meanness is religion that believes it does any
service to God by hurting people. ·
Meanness is a country that doesn’t take the
precaution to act as if the planet is temporary, whether we
believe there is global warming or not. ·
Meanness is a failure to be a good steward under
the notion that such a practice is “wimpy” and
“effeminate.” ·
Meanness is someone who limits the beauty of
believing in God because they can cite incidences of ignorance.
·
Meanness is a Republican who mocks a Democrat and
a Democrat who denigrates the intelligence of a Republican.
·
Meanness is a Baptist who thinks a Methodist is
not a Christian. ·
Meanness is a Methodist who thinks a Baptist is
overwrought. ·
Meanness is interfering in the lives of other
people without understanding how their lives have been
interfered with. ·
Meanness is forgetting that where we stab, poke,
jab and punch is flesh and blood, and not ideologies and
doctrines. ·
Meanness hurts.
So I am one man who is on a campaign to restore my country to
the
Yours,
J The
Film Blog – Friday, September 18th, 2009 “You
sure are busy.” That’s
what people say to me all the time. Do
you know something? I’m really not. I have lots of
time on my hands. I think people make that evaluation
because they look at what I do and assume that it takes a lot of
time, energy and effort to achieve. I suppose if you wanted
it to, the work could encompass you, overwhelm you or, I assume,
even destroy you. That’s
too bad. This assertion from our society has kind of created
a “fear of labor” and removed all the love from the project. People
yearn to have leisure instead of passionately pursuing their
pursuits. I
think the key to everything is not being afraid—to start. I’m
beginning a new project myself, with a revival of a Broadway play
I wrote called Mountain,
putting together a cast next week at a rehearsal camp and then
launching them on a two-week tour of the Midwest. I
suppose the task would seem daunting, but I never look at the task
when trying to achieve a purpose. Because every task seems
formidable. For
instance, sometimes I don’t even want to get up and take a
shower, because the concept of subsiding overtakes me with
anxiety. But no shower is ever achieved without taking a
precious moment to pull back the covers and take several deep
breaths. Swing your legs around, feet landing on the floor.
Roll your neck to take the kinks out. Take a big drink of
water from the cup near your bed. Think something nice.
Speak something nice to the room. Just
those actions have removed the task and replaced it with moments
towards movement. It’s
all about the next thing. We’re all stymied by the heap of
trash that accumulates in front of us, blocking the sensibility of
a straightened room. Just pick something off the top and
throw it away. The journey has begun. I know it sounds
simple—perhaps to some of you, even silly. But counting
the cost and carefully considering your options is better achieved
after the decision has been made to actually do something. Because
facts will always keep you away from fulfillment. And
statistics will lock you up in the status quo. And fear is
the great mother who never allows her children to escape the nest.
So
am I busy? No. I hope what I am is on
point—to the next thing that needs to be done.
Or is it wants to be
done? I
guess it’s all how you think about it, right? And I think
that I’m not busy—just involved. I
wish the same for you. Greetings
from
Yours, J The
Film Blog – Friday, September 11th, 2009 I
am so grateful. I finally have a name for it. I’m
talking about those awkward moments when you make some sort of
ridiculous stand about something that ends up usually being wrong
or your fault in the first place. For
instance, I’ve gone through the house, yelling at my wife and
children about losing my car keys, while reciting to them in vivid
detail my memory of how I had given those same keys into their
care, and they had foolishly lost them. Then I would reach
in my pocket and find them. Or
there was the time I got behind a car and I was in a big hurry,
and the car just sat there, and the light was green, so finally,
in a fury of frustration, I blared my horn—as a baby carriage
rolled by the car in front of me, making it clear why the driver
had stopped in the first place. (Of course, I did have a
flash of arrogance, to wonder why he didn’t just go ahead and
kill the child so I could be on time. . .) Yes—I
have yelled at people about a variety of subjects, only to
discover that the error landed in my front yard. I’ve
complained in restaurants about utensils not being available to me
on the table, when there was a sign on the wall about forty feet
high informing the public that silverware was available in the
trays below. I
have mocked the accuracy of people’s quotations, only to
discover later that they were right and my mind must have been
stuck somewhere in Mother Goose land. I have told people
they were liars because I failed to understand the information
they had available to them, which I had only perused. Tonight
I am so grateful because I have a name for this audacious,
overbearing, repetitive, arrogant condition. From now on,
whenever I find myself doing something stupid that’s uncaring,
blatantly unaware, and disrespectful of the fellow human beings
around me because I am feeling particularly frisky or overly
confident, I will know exactly what to dub it. I’m
pullin’ a Yes—in
honor of Congressman Joe Wilson, who thought he had a right to
attack the honorary guest at a party when he was just there to
have a slice of cake, I will always know what to call my stupid
interludes of self indulgence. You
might want to consider it, too. It could become a national
treasure—maybe catching up with words and phrases like
“dork,” “dip-shit,” and “senior moment.” So
the next time you catch yourself being overly zealous about your
own rights and reasons, call it what it is. “Doggone
it, folks, excuse me. I was just pullin’ a
Yours, J The
Film Blog – Friday, September 4th, 2009
Macho and motherhood.
I personally have had my fill.
This whole smokescreen of men
being men and women
being women, and “men like this” and “women like
that” and after all, “it’s all about the kids . . .”
I see people who are parents of young children, who are completely
overwhelmed at the notion of taking care of a little person.
Am
I the only person who sees that these little folks are completely
dependent upon us, and therefore can be manipulated to do our
will? Why are they running our households? Why are
women sighing and gasping in exhaustion from chasing down their
children? Why am I shopping in grocery stores, hearing kids
scream for a candy bar with their parents standing haplessly
nearby as if being held at gunpoint by Gestapo agents? My
God, these little twerps get food, water, television,
Internet—not to mention, shelter and love—from us. Why
are THEY controlling the households of
So men escape the burden of fatherhood by doing macho stuff like
NASCAR, NFL fantasy football, fishing, hunting and, of course,
that most muscle-bound activity, surfing the Internet. Women
hide behind fatigue, busyness and motherhood, while despondently
conveying their displeasure with the whole concept of family life.
But don’t tell them that.
They will insist to you that they are “thrilled” with
motherhood and that their children are everything
to them, as they convey an aching expression conjuring the image
of Atlas holding up the world.
We have become a society of macho men and motherhood women, while
co-jointly convincing ourselves that the sexes have really no
emotional linkage and therefore are basically incompatible, yet
mysteriously destined to be linked together by some sort of cosmic
joke.
Maybe if we just backed off on the macho a little bit, guys. . .
The women I meet are just as functional, strong and energetic as
the men. They just have to be given license to be something
other than a toddler totter.
Talk about painting yourself in a corner! Men and women in
the American culture are standing on their tiptoes, afraid of the
drying paint around them—at the mercy of motherhood and
machismo. They have lost the control in their lives, and
their children have way too much focus and time given to them.
Mom and Dad, you
control the house. You
control the refrigerator. You
control the allowance. You
control the air they breathe. You don’t need to be mean,
but for God’s sakes, stop being afraid of your own spawn. Get
together as men and women and make a plan to subdue these little
urchins—because as long as they can keep Dad macho and Mom stuck
making apple pies, they will control the household and cause our
nation to be a mangled mess of miscommunication. I
am sick of macho and motherhood. I love my children, but
they are part of the family of man, not the only family of this
man. They neither control me, nor do they annoy me. I
include them and they are welcome to come along with me or find
their separate paths. But I will not fall into the American
pattern of “macho men” and “mothering women.” There
are times I make a damn good mother. And there are times
that the women around me do the bulk of the carrying. We are
a race that was meant to be joined together, not separated by a
discrepancy of genitalia. Macho
and motherhood.
I’ve
had my fill. How about you?
Yours,
J
|