Uneasy Rest

For some time my neighborhood has existed as a sort of shrine to Edgar. Edgar was a kid from around the corner who was shot and killed. For the past five years, around Christmas or his birthday, we get some new graffiti reminding us of the loss of Edgar. Most of them read, "RIP Edgar." These are, no doubt, contemporaries of Edgar who had the good fortune not to be shot and killed doing the memorializing. I wonder sometimes if Edgar wouldn't rest more peacefully if his spirit wasn't being spray painted on fences, sidewalks and bus benches. I wonder if his contemporaries might rest more peacefully here on earth if they were to let him go.
Over the past couple of weeks, I have noticed a usurper in our midst. Porky is currently the name on everyone's blank wall. Now we want Porky to rest in peace. I don't know what part of the neighborhood Porky is from. I can't be sure that Porky is even from the neighborhood, but his name is certainly in evidence there. I don't know all the teenagers on the block, but I am pretty sure that none of their Christian names are "Porky." Or were.
Porky's fans are a little more industrious than Edgar's. They have marked a much wider swath through our streets. They don't seems as fixed on one particular corner. They also don't seem as limited in media and color. Where Edgar's clan seems to be limited primarily to black Sharpie marker or spray paint, Porky's gang favors a much wider pallet of colors, paint, and even chalk. In some places, Porky has overwritten Edgar.
Did I say "gang" just a paragraph ago? Maybe that's the problem. I don't understand this whole gang thing. Why would we want to celebrate someone when they die? Why not appreciate all that they are and can be while they are alive? Live in peace? Sounds like a nice dream.

Vaya Con Dios, Edgar

The shrine for Edgar is three blocks away from my house. Edgar was shot and killed on Monday afternoon on the corner where sometimes we stop and play at the park with our dog. She likes to run up and down the slides. My son is old enough now to read the graffiti that covers the play structure and benches. My dog doesn't read, but it's obvious that there are a lot of people who want us to know that this is their park.
Now a little corner will be devoted to Edgar. He lived to be eighteen. Now there are candles lined up in front of the sign that welcomes visitors to Nicol Park. There are a number of colorful mylar balloons tied to the fence along with three plain white T-shirts spray-painted with the legend: RIP Edgar 6/16/08.
It is a sad irony that one of the photos that our city councilman, Ignacio De La Fuente, chose to include in his campaign materials was a pretty color picture of Nicol Park shortly after it had been completed. In spite of the best efforts of city crews to cover it up, that was about the last time that the park was free of gang graffiti. I used to content myself with the notion that that kind of thing happened when I was safe at home, three blocks away. Edgar was shot and killed at one thirty in the afternoon. He has the nominal distinction of being the fifty-eighth homicide in Oakland this year. There were children playing in the park at the time. Police said none of them were hurt. And I guess that will have to serve as the good news.

For Ever

A couple days after a profoundly confused security guard shot up a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, there was another shooting. This one took place a few blocks from my house. It happened a little after noon in an intersection that I run past on a regular basis. The requisite shrine with candles, balloons and taped-up poems sprang up overnight. It was a microcosm of the tributes that have been set up for the victims in Orlando. There aren't enough balloons. There aren't enough candles. Or flowers or sidewalk chalk or poems. These memorials are set up to last as long as the memories can, but they never do, even when they use those mylar balloons.
Or spray paint.
Another couple blocks down the street from the intersection where a young man breathed his last, there was a fresh tag, in black. This one wasn't for the guy who was killed in the most recent drive-by. It wasn't in memory of any or all of those murdered in Florida. It was for a kid who was shot on a different corner, near my house: Edgar. Edgar died when he was just eighteen. He wasn't the youngest victim of gun  violence here in Oakland. There are plenty of kids younger than him vying for that honor. Edgar does have the distinction of being a face that I can put to the names and the places where people have been shot and killed. I would love to tell you that it is a face that I will always remember, but it has been eight years since he was cut down, and while I remember him vaguely from seeing him on the street way back then, and the pictures that were posted next to those burning candles and mylar balloons, when I see "RIP Edgar" scrawled across a sidewalk or fence or some other flat surface. Instead, I think of all the other names that have come before and since. A list that keeps growing. A list that is exponentially larger when you consider those who knew and loved those killed by stray or direct fire. The degree of separation keeps getting smaller. Soon, everyone will know someone who was shot.
Sure, it helps the curve to live in Oakland. Or Orlando. Or Detroit. Or Newtown. A list of names that keeps growing too. Sales of candles and balloons continue to grow. As more hearts break.

What I Want

Maybe birthdays don't come from a store, he paraphrased Dr. Seuss, maybe birthdays mean just a little bit more. When I was a kid, birthdays were often measured by the loot. Always impressed by the way my mom listened to my wants, I suppose I shouldn't have been amazed when I got that Fonzie T-shirt. Aaaaay.
Getting the gifts I wanted wasn't the big deal, really. It was the continuation of the story. My older brother continues to celebrate each trip around the sun, since that's the thing that really matters. The gift of life, another chance to get it right. Or foul up in the most spectacular way. Another spin on the big wheel. I'm not getting places as fast as I used to, and the next day I feel the wear and tear of the miles I have put on since the early sixties. More scars, less hair, more wisdom, less enthusiasm for random chance. Getting from point A to point B in as straight a line as possible seems like the best plan, even if the whole thing seems to be dominated by the circular orbit of the earth around the sun.
Five days ago, Edgar's friends met to commemorate his passing nine years ago. This time there was a poster, signed by many, included the date of his arrival on the planet and when he exited. It struck my that these folks were gathering each year to focus on the latter.
It made me think of how, in my twenties, I focused on the day my friend Darren shuffled off his mortal coil. It is the luxury of being so removed from death that you can remain so fascinated by it. It was a novelty. When my father passed away, he did us a mild service of going right around the time of his birthday, so his life has polite bookends that allow us to celebrate a life in total. So often I find myself writing here about how lives end, I should point out that all this observation began fifty-five years ago, and I have never made a full accounting of all those people, friends, family, strangers who made some of the smallest moments in five and a half decades special. I am way behind on my Thank You Cards. And I would like to remind those who loved Edgar to focus on the gift he was while he was here, rather than the tragic circumstances that bring the candles out to the sidewalk every June 16. All our lives we have that opportunity to share with those around us and even though it crushes us to think of it coming to an end, I want to focus on the joy I have experienced as a result of being brought into this world. That is the gift that keeps on giving. Like that loophole in the three wishes: wish for unlimited wishes with that third one.
Aaaay.

Personal Conviciton

Thirteen really is an unlucky number. I think O.J. Simpson would agree with me on that. Thirteen years to the day after being acquitted of killing his wife and her friend in Los Angeles, he was found guilty of robbing two sports-memorabilia dealers at gunpoint in a Las Vegas hotel room. This one, to quote the late Johnny Cochran, did fit.
It is doubtful that, short of Johnny rising from the grave to defend the Heisman Trophy winner, no Dream Team could have saved him this time. The Hall of Fame football star was convicted of kidnapping, armed robbery and ten other charges for gathering up five men a year ago and storming into a room at a hotel-casino, where the group seized several game balls, plaques and photos. Prosecutors said two of the men with him were armed; one of them said Simpson asked him to bring a gun. If any portion of that story is true, why shouldn't he go to jail? What part of "stay out of trouble" does Mister Simpson not understand?
That would include steering clear of people and situations that would lead him back to a courtroom for any reason. Simpson and his lawyers argued the incident was not a robbery, but an attempt to reclaim mementos that had been stolen from him. Ironically, those items included a photo of Simpson with former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Here's a suggestion for you, O.J.: When somebody steals from you, instead of taking the law into your own hands, call the police, or maybe even Judge Wapner.

Help Police

Those two words up there have plenty of meaning, alone or together. A lot depends on how you choose to assert them. Either word can be a verb or a noun. But perhaps the most regular occurrence of this phrase is a plea for assistance. When things go bad, who aside from Ghostbusters are you gonna call? Help! Police!
There is a moment in the movie Fletch, where Chevy Chase is confronted by Joe Don Baker who plays the crooked chief who is behind the heroin ring being run on the beach. With perfect deadpan irony, Fletch looks up and says, "Thank God, the police." Things have just gone from bad to worse for this investigative reporter. The cavalry has arrived, but not to rescue anyone.
This is what I keep thinking about as we wade through the weeks and days of tumult and questions about police reform. I am certainly old enough to remember playing cops and robbers without a stitch of Chase-ian irony. We knew who the good guys were. We knew who the bad guys were. Of course this was right about the time that a sitting American president felt the need to stand up in front of a group of press and a national television audience to tell them "I am not a crook." Well, as it turned out, Richard Nixon was a crook. The President of the United States was a bad guy. He got out of the White House just ahead of the cops coming to take him away.
At least that's how my twelve year old imagination had it.
It was also around this time that we found out just how bad a guy the Federal Bureau of Investigation had at the top of their ranks. J. Edgar Hoover was the head cop in the United States from 1924 until his death in 1972. For a long time, Hoover was looked upon as a national hero for all his crime fighting exploits. Presidents came and went, but Hoover stayed on. And by the time he was taken out of his well-feathered nest by the angels, he had become every bit as corrupt as any of the ten most wanted. He had a profound issue with the burgeoning civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties. Some of those presidents for whom he served were afraid of him. Even Richard Nixon.
Fear can be a pretty amazing motivator.
Along about the mid-seventies, the trope of one good cop was established. Frank Serpico, in real life and as portrayed by Al Pacino was one of the early whistleblowers. Frank was the one who brought down his fellow cops when he shined a light on the NYPD corruption. In the late sixties and early seventies. Serpico was a lone wolf, and for his trouble he was set up to be murdered by his fellow officers. Setting the stage for rogue cops to be the standard, both in real life and in media.
It is now 2020. The need to rely on old chops like "a few bad apples" doesn't fly very far when we are presented daily with new evidence of bad apples. Everywhere. Those in law enforcement who do not welcome reform of some sort at this time must have been asleep for the past fifty years. Or maybe they were just going to different movies than I was.

Seasonal

 Morbid. That's the word that comes to mind as I look back over the past few days. And this glass from my mother's cupboard came to mind. It was part of a series of William Steig-designed cocktail ware Back in the day, we served my parents' gin and tonics in those glasses. This was part of a lifestyle that embraced certain elements of "morbid" that could be mined from pop culture. Like the "sick humor" of Lenny Bruce or riddles such as "what's green and red and goes ninety miles an hour?" 

It was an acquired taste, and given the number of Charles Addams cartoon books found in my childhood home this alone should have given casual visitors a clue as to what sort of morbid things were going on inside. In the summer there was a regular listening to CBS's Radio Mystery Theater, and plenty of Edgar Allen Poe to supplement our mildly twisted outlook on life. By the age of eleven I had mastered the pronunciation of the word "macabre." 

Horror wasn't confined to the Fall, but autumn certainly brought my family's aesthetic to the fore. Our house was an early adopter of what has become a much larger trend toward decorating for Halloween. This set me up for a bit of sweet karma when my college friend and roommate died in a car crash the week before All Saints Eve. The Halloween party we had been planning for weeks prior became his wake, coinciding interestingly enough with Oingo Boingo's release of their album "Dead Man's Party." 

Morbid fascination. 

Fast forward a lifetime give or take, and our beloved main dog passed on in the middle of October. 

A decade passed. My mother went to heaven in the middle of another October. 

So a few nights ago I was staring at the desktop on my computer and I noticed a folder that I hadn't opened for quite some time. It was labeled "David - English." When I opened it I was confronted by the advanced directive I had begun composing the last time I was feeling both particularly responsible and mortal. There were plans for my corpse. There were suggestions for music to be played. Mostly there were instructions for how I wanted to be dealt with when my number finally came up. 

The highball glass eventually found a home in my younger brother's cupboard. I got mom's piano. I want to find some time to sit down and really play it. Nothing morbid. 

Something of the season. 

In My Head

 Recently, I wrote about the relative permissiveness of my parents when it came to the entertainments I enjoyed during my formative years. That seminal experience of huddling at the foot of my parents' bed watching King Kong for the very first time is one that shaped, or perhaps bent, me for a lifetime. Coupled with a subscription to Famous Monsters of Filmland, my youth was solidly forged in the movies of the thirties and forties. The ones about vampires, mummies, werewolves and anything with Boris Karloff in it. To say that my life was forever changed by all those images of horror would not be an overstatement. 

But those images would have to compete with the ones I conjured up in my own head on all those summer nights when I stayed up late in our mountain cabin, reading the works of Edgar Allen Poe. The faint jingling of the bells on the jester's costume of the fool who would be walled up in the cellar in The Cask of Amontillado. The dead eye of the old man who would be murdered, dismembered and stuffed beneath the floorboards in The Tell Tale Heart. The rapping, tapping at my chamber door of The Raven. At an age when so many of my peers were filling their heads with Little League and swim team, I was holed up in the loft of that cabin, imagining myself having to make the choice between The Pit and the Pendulum. All of these stories and poems filled my head on top of the foundation laid by the novels Frankenstein and Dracula. And HG Wells' War of the Worlds. 

I was reading classic literature. I was filing my brain with murder and mayhem via the works of some of the most revered writers of all time. What parent wouldn't want their child to be steeped in the classics? Is it any wonder that by the time I was a teenager that I was already steeped in those things that would forever warp my sensibilities? 

No one ever asked. It was part of me. A great dark shadow inside me that was further enhanced by nightly visits to the CBS Radio Mystery Theater, hosted by the late great E.G. Marshall. It was Mister Marshall that gave me the gift of the word "macabre," for which I am eternally grateful. In the early seventies, there was no "goth" lifestyle to adopt. I was just another kid wandering around in my T-shirts and jeans, with a head full of horror. 

And I liked it. 

Liftoff

On Saturday morning, American astronauts lifted off from these United States for the first time in nearly a decade. The launch comes at a time when anything resembling good news is a welcome relief. For a generation of humans who were raised on the hope of missions to the moon and Star Trek, this is a reminder of how things could be. Not how things are.
It should be noted that during the sixties when wars and race riots were making life hard down here on earth, there was a cretin in the White House. Richard Nixon is the one who made the call to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin as they sat in Tranquility Base. Never mind the fact that he was the man who ran against John F. Kennedy and lost. Kennedy was the man who laid out the grand plan to send men to the moon. Nixon, the challenger, sent more men to Vietnam.
And eventually, going to the moon became a bore. A very expensive bore. A "why don't we save some of that money to fix things down here?" bore. Just a few years after the Eagle had landed, the last man walked on the moon.
1972. The year that Nixon won reelection. The year of the Watergate break-in. It would be another decade before the Space Shuttle program would put Americans back into space. It is no coincidence that the first shuttle was named Enterprise. Their decade long mission was to boldly move payloads to space and to repair broken satellites. Not exactly strange new worlds, but it was paving the way. Americans astronauts were no longer white, crew-cut sporting test pilots. Men and women of all backgrounds had their chance to slip the surly bonds of earth. Finally, space looked a little more like Star Trek. 
And what about earth? How did it look? 
Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell probably put it best: “You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.”
Maybe when Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken come back from their trip they'll do just that. 
It's time. 

Can We Talk?

Of course we can. This is the United States of America where, after the right to carry loaded automatic weapons into fast food restaurants, we treasure our right to free speech. Which is why Joan Rivers was such a uniquely American Icon. When Joan died last week, I felt bad, but mostly for her because like Robin Williams, there were still so many jokes to tell. About herself.
When she first started out, she was a housewife telling stories about her husband "Fang," and describing the life of a woman trying to find a place for herself outside the bounds of "homemaker." To wit: "I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes and six months later you have to start all over again." This is the kind of line that made her a fixture on talk shows, especially Johnny Carson, where she eventually became a favorite and eventually the go-to guest host back in the eighties. By this time, Joan's act had become more about show business than about the drudgery of being a wife and mother. It was 1986 that she chose to go to Fox for her own show, rather than continue to stay safe in the warm shadow of The Tonight Show guest host spot.
That show lasted a year. Unfortunately, "Fang" only lasted that long as well. Her husband and manager, Edgar, committed suicide in 1987. That didn't stop Joan. It may have slowed her down, but it didn't stop her. She kept talking. And talking. "I succeeded by saying what everyone else is thinking," she once said, describing her way of cutting through the facade of show business. She was not above poking fun at her own facade, as her innumerable trips to the plastic surgeon became a staple of her act: "I've had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware."
Well, that would have been funny, but it's not what will really happen. Joan will be buried just a few months after she returned to the Tonight Show for the last time. It is entirely fitting that this was her swansong, since late night talk was really what she was all about. She may not have stomped on the Terra, per se, but she did tear up the couch. Aloha, Joan.

Cinema? We're Making Movies Here!

 The King is dead. Long live the king.

Last week Roger Corman, self-proclaimed King of the B Movies passed away at the age of ninety-eight. But not without leaving great giant footprints which so many others would follow. Academy Award winning director Ron Howard, after becoming tired of playing second fiddle to Fonzie on Happy Days went to work for Mister Corman and made a little film called Grand Theft Auto. That was back in 1977. In 2002, he won best director and best film Oscars for A Beautiful Mind. As a producer and director, his films have grossed more than six billion dollars. A pretty nice run for a guy who started by making a low budget comedy with car chases. 

Francis Ford Coppola, the man who brought us The Godfather saga, Apocalypse Now and helped spawn the careers of so many other filmmakers got his start directing a little slice of horror called Dementia 13. He got this job from Roger Corman. Francis has seen fit to pay it forward, helping to launch the career of his pal George Lucas in addition to putting out a very nice Cabernet Sauvignon. 

Did you like Silence of the Lambs? The director of that movie, Jonathan Demme won an Academy Award for it. All made possible by his early work at American International Pictures for, you guessed it, Roger Corman. He showed up on the scene in 1977, not unlike Ron Howard, with a little car crash movie called Breaker, Breaker! Mister Demme is also the director of one of the greatest concert films ever made, Stop Making Sense, and also a little movie called Philadelphia. Not bad for a "cult director." 

The list goes on, but I think my favorite bit of the Roger Corman legend comes from 1963. After directing a lavish, by Corman standards, adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven, he realized he still had horror legend Boris Karloff under contract for two more days. The slated golf outing was put off because of bad weather, and so using the left over sets along with the estimable talents of another protege young Jack Nicholson, the gang set to work fabricating a feature film over the weekend. The result was The Terror, If you have an hour and twenty-one minutes to spend trying to unravel the somewhat nonsensical plot I can almost guarantee you will want an hour and fifteen minutes back. 

But such was the genius of Roger Corman. The list of folks who began their trip to Hollywood working for him is immense. Robert De Niro, Joe Dante, John Cameron and the ubiquitous Dick Miller all got their start thanks to the King of the B's. To say that Mister Corman stomped on the Terra might be selling his influence a little short, but since we're on a budget, let's just say that he will be missed. For a long, long, time. 

Creepy

One thing I have been able to take away from this eastern corner of our great land is a very solid sense of the macabre. Please don't ask me to pronounce that last word, it always comes out a little like "croissant." It's all inflection and the very specific meaning gets lost in the translation. It sounds silly coming out, so I tend not to say it. Instead I prefer to ask for one of those twisty French rolls that are so nice and flaky, or to suggest that a particular time or place was creepy, rather than, well you know.
But was my experience, tucked away on the edge of the woods. It seems like most of the streets and houses in this state sit with their backs to some vast and impenetrable forest. A forest that is simply waiting for someone to be foolish enough to wander out into them just long enough to look for that stray cat, or chase a firefly. I was immediately transported back to the first time I saw "The Blair Witch Project," and how easy it was to be sucked into the fear those kids felt as they went deeper and deeper into that tangle of branches and vines. In all the years that I wandered through the woods of Colorado, I never got the feeling that some child-eating witch was hovering just outside my view, waiting for a chance to draw me in to her trap. I was more concerned with the whereabouts of my brothers. They were a much more reliable threat. Tangible even.
I know now what drove Edgar Allan Poe to scribble furious, mad ramblings into the dead of night. Dead. Maybe that's it. There's just so much more past tense in this neck of the woods. Settlers, natives, women, children. All these spirits hanging around waiting for their chance to mess with anyone who would let them. It's downright, what's the word? Spooky.

Detox Mansion

Charlie Sheen went back to rehab on Friday. I suspect they probably had a room waiting. He may be the first to land there because of hilarity, but to hear him tell it, that's why he's currently in recovery. One of the highest paid actors on television was originally in need of medical attention because of a night of TV viewing that left him sore and out of sorts. It wasn't an overdose this time. It was a hernia. He literally busted a gut. Whether he was watching reruns of his own show was not readily apparent, but it did bring to mind something my father used to say: "The difference between drunks and alcoholics is that drunks don't have to go to all those meetings."
And so it goes with the rich and famous when they get a snoot full of this or that. There's always a spot in Doctor Drew's Sober House. If you're not making nearly a million dollars per half-hour episode, you might not be as lucky. As a matter of fact, you probably won't even have your 911 calls played on "Entertainment Tonight." You'll probably lose your job, too, though finding a way to latch onto the rehab clause of your company's medical coverage might not be such a bad way to go out if you were predisposed to such behavior.
No, Charlie will probably be allowed to bounce back, much in the same way that Lindsay Lohan has kept us all on the edge of our seats for the latest installment of her tawdry life. It was just this past Christmas Eve that Mister Sheen was celebrating with his wife by engaging in a little second-degree assault, menacing and criminal mischief. Christmas Day was spent in Aspen, but in jail.
Because he's a celebrity, he has his fans and his detractors. There are plenty of people who wish him well and hope that he can get his life squared away. There are an equal number on the other side, eagerly anticipating the next lurid headline. Real life doesn't offer those kind of cheering sections. If you're strung out and poor, you're a bum. If you're strung out and famous, you're on reality TV. We can all learn a few things from the odyssey of Charlie Sheen. Excess, after all, isn't much of a lifestyle. Binges have a nasty way of coming to an end. David Lee Roth liked to tell people that he "used to have a drug problem. Now I've got enough money." When the money runs out, so does the amusing portion of that statement. It is one of the unique challenges of our modern society: Back in the day, Edgar Allan Poe died from his addictions. So did Jimi and Janis and John. Their legends were exacerbated by their excesses. Now, in order to prevent such tragedies, we get our celebrities sober so they can go out and disappoint us again as soon as possible. I suspect that if the consequences that Charlie Sheen were facing were more like life and death instead of missing a few days' taping, his attitude might be a little less cavalier. This next little bit is for Charlie: Hey, Chuck. You're forty-five. You're the father of four. Grow up. Thank you.

Realty Reality

"There are good neighborhoods and bad in Oakland," our real estate agent told us as we drove around town, looking at houses to buy. "You can go down one street and feel completely safe, while just around the corner, you might be thinking 'uh-oh.'" And so it went as we went from one side of the city to the other. We began to understand this feeling as we continued out tour. We understand it even more fully fourteen years after we bought that house.
Across the street from the park where the urban spray paint and candle shrine still rises out of the sidewalk once or twice a year to Edgar, an upstairs apartment burned early Sunday morning. I was out on my morning run when I came across the crime scene tape. I stopped to ask the officer who was standing next to his cruiser if anyone was hurt. "We're not sure yet," he replied.
I went home to check on Al Gore's Internet. The tenant who was renting the apartment was in jail, so it couldn't have been him, but there were two bodies found inside. Signs pointed to the pair being left for dead after the fire was started. Witnesses saw someone leaving the building with gas cans. Firefighters suggested that the victims may have suffered trauma before the fire was set. An investigation is underway.
Meanwhile, around the corner, life continues. Down the hill from where the gunmen holed up in his apartment. A few blocks away from where the shoot out with the DEA agents took place. Just a little further down the road from where the kid ran past me shooting at a passing pickup truck. In the town where the homicide rate clicks on up toward eighty for the year. There are good neighborhoods and bad in Oakland.