Re: Solutions

"A man's got to know his limitations."
- Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry in "Magnum Force"
Admittedly this quote isn't as eternal as "Go ahead, make my day," but it is definitely more suited to my purpose. My wife asked me last night if I had any New Year's Resolutions. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have said, "A man's got to know his limitations."
From this you might guess that I don't put much stock in resolutions, New Year's or otherwise. Making promises at the onset of an experience will almost automatically come back to haunt you. At the first slip, someone will undoubtedly pipe up with a cheery reminder: "Remember when you promised..."
No thanks. I'm not fond of setting myself up for those annoying confrontations with the aforementioned limitations. By contrast, I am very good at keeping my promises. In this I tend to favor another character, Horton the Elephant. "I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful, one hundred percent." Since I work on a planet that is comprised primarily of nine and ten year olds, I know that they hear any vague commitment as the word from on high and I will be held to whatever oath I may have absent-mindedly made. If I give away a pencil for a perfect score on a spelling test once, you can be sure that I will be doing it for the duration of the school year.
I understand that resolutions are primarily for the purpose of self-improvement, but that doesn't make me feel more open to their evil influence. In my mind they seem perfectly suited for some "Gift of the Magi/Monkey's Paw" whammy that would hound me for the rest of my days, or at least three hundred and sixty-five of them. Instead I prefer to continue to look at my life as a work in progress - an open book. To this end, I feel comfortable making the only resolution I can imagine for myself: "I resolve not to make any resolutions." After all, I know my limitations.

Montage Is Conflict

Many years ago I studied film. I studied the history and the techniques. I studied film makers and their work. I learned to speak knowingly of "mise en scene" (what is in front of the camera) and "montage" (the way images are put together). Aside from giving me a slightly larger French vocabulary, I was able to bore friends and family at parties with my discussions of Eisenstein and "dialectical montage."
This morning, I felt some quiet vindication for all my blathering on: Apparently the drones over at Fox News (We Report, You Submit To Our Will) went to the same classes I did. In Sergei Eisenstein's "Strike", a shot of striking workers being attacked cut with a shot of a bull being slaughtered creates a film metaphor suggesting that the workers are being treated like cattle. This meaning does not exist in the individual shots - it only arises when they are juxtaposed. Fast forward ninety years to this morning's report on Fox News (We Juxtapose, You Nod Dully): On one side of the screen, a talking head blathers on about the death of the vile dictator Saddam Hussein. On the other side of the screen is a series of graphics listing the past six month's activity of al Qaida. As the talking head continued his discussion of the potential for violence in Iraq following Saddam's execution he mentioned Shiites, Sunnis, and the four-day Eid al-Adha festival, the most important holiday of the Islamic calendar for Shiites. At no point was there an attempt to link the information on one side of the screen to the other.
We are supposed to do that. In "The Godfather", during Michael's nephew's baptism, the priest performs the sacrament of baptism while we see killings ordered by Michael take place elsewhere. The murders thus "baptize" Michael into a life of crime. I got that. I got the subtle inference in "North By Northwest" when Cary Grant pulls Eva Marie Saint into their bunk on a train just before we see that same train speed into a tunnel. At this point I feel compelled to rhapsodize about the "language of film." But I will spare you.
Instead, I wish for the new year that we can start to see things without the aid of green screens and news tickers. We are all in need of some good editing - but be fair and let us decide.

2006 In The Rear View Mirror

This morning, from the comfort of my nice warm bed, I watched one of those "sum up the year in two minutes of video footage" montages that played over a loop of solemn music. You know the kind of piece I mean - with periodic sound bites that creeped into the mix: "When we came in they were all dead," and "There were no survivors." Cue the swell of even more solemn music.
What was missing from all this (with apologies to Steve Martin) death and grief and sorrow and murder? Usually in the midst of the mining disasters and the war-torn regions and the children crying for their missing parents or food or both comes a few seconds of hope. That's when the music turns a little sprightly and we get a flurry of sports and other whimsical silliness that serves as a palate cleansing sorbet for the ugly mess that was the year we all lived through.
There was no sorbet this year. Or at least it was hard to cobble one together out of the news from 2006. Even Pluto got demoted this year. Sure, I could get a little smile from the Democrats sweep through Congress, and there was a Super Bowl and a World Series - but the Democrats have done little so far beyond dropping balloons and making many assertions that things will change, and the sports world is filled with steroids and ugly behavior. Where will our slow motion moment of triumph come from?
Instead, I propose a "Pollyanna" vision of the preceding year. Instead of focusing the ongoing strife and human suffering, let us take a moment to consider the up side. To quote another comic sage, Bill Murray, "Talk about massive potential for change!" 2006 was a struggle, and those of us who made it to the other side can look back and breathe a communal sigh of relief. And with that, the music slows to a triumphant chorus as we make our secret wishes for 2007. See you on the other side.

Looking Back

There's just something about "secret tapes" and Bob Woodward. In 2004, former President Gerald Ford submitted to an interview with Woodward under the conditions that it only be released after his death. "Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction," Ford said. "And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."
This is coming from a guy who gave "Rummy" and "Dick" their first big shots at White House politics. Jerry also gave interviews to the New York Daily News last May, saying "Saddam Hussein was an evil person and there was justification to get rid of him," he observed to the Daily News. "But we shouldn't have put the basis on weapons of destruction. That was a bad mistake. Where does (Bush) get his advice?"
Well, sadly, he got his advice from some of the same guys who looked so spirited and young in file footage of the Ford Presidency. Asked why Cheney had tanked in public opinion polls, he smiled. "Dick's a classy guy, but he's not an electrified orator," Ford said. And not such a great shot, either, as it turns out.
Hindsight is twenty-twenty, that much is certain. Gerald Ford is another American citizen hopping on a bandwagon that is getting very full these days. What public official outside of Pinhead's enclave is still leading the cheer for the war in Iraq? Timing is everything, but Ford gave his interview with Woodward two years ago, and more than six months ago to the News. The difference here is that he felt the need, as he almost always did, to do the right thing. "I don't think, if I had been president, on the basis of the facts as I saw them publicly," Ford said, "I don't think I would have ordered the Iraq war. I would have maximized our effort through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer."

I'm Gerald Ford, And You're Not

For a couple of years, I forgot exactly what Gerald Ford looked like. For two years, when I thought of Mister Ford, I thought of Chevy Chase. I know now that these two men knew nothing alike, but Chevy became, for me, the embodiment of our thirty-eighth president. Whether he was falling over a podium or asserting that he was "told there would be no math" during a presidential debate, my world view was formed by late-night television.
Gerald Ford fell down a few times, smacked a spectator or two with a golf ball, and was shot at by a girl named Squeaky. His presidency had a certain Murphy's Law element to it. Of course, anyone who walked in to pick up the ball after Richard Nixon had dropped it near his opponent's goal line would have had a long road. Gerald Ford walked that road with his head up, so it was natural that it would bump into a few things on the way.
He was left with the wreckage of Watergate and Vietnam. He walked into the Oval Office without ever seeking it. By virtually all accounts, he was a nice man asked to do a nearly impossible job. Moments such as the time he asserted that "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe" as he mounted his campaign for re-election in 1976, or his ubiquitous "Whip Inflation Now" (WIN) buttons, he always seemed just a little overmatched by his circumstances.
Maybe that's why I appreciated him so much. He was so very obviously human, after the scary Shakespearean caricature of Tricky Dick. He had a golden retriever named Liberty. His wife speak her mind and periodically gave him fits, but he loved her fiercely. He was, perhaps, our first mensch president. He kept the ship of state afloat during an economic and constitutional crisis, and made the world safe for "Foul Play."

Time The Avenger

Seven hundred and fifty-five days, ten hours, and two minutes - give or take a second or two: That's how long President Pinhead has left in office as I sit down to write this. The good news is that the clock is ticking.
The bad news? Well, there seems to be plenty of that. The U.S. military announced the deaths of seven American soldiers, raising the death toll significantly in one of the bloodiest months for the military this year. Thank goodness that we had been warned by his Pointy-cranium-ness that we could "expect more casualties" as Operation Liberate Reason continues. These additional fatalities brought the number of U.S. military members killed since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003 to at least 2,978 — five more than the number killed in the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
I understand that we continue to compare apples and oranges here - dead apples and dead oranges - but when will the weight of common sense and decency cause the leadership to face up to the face that what we are doing is not working. We are not introducing liberty or democracy to Iraq. We are stirring up a civil war and our troops are caught in the crossfire.
Here are some thoughts from Emily Miller, a sister of a member of the Army National Guard, serving in Iraq: "Victory being out of the question at this point, the only democracy my brother is fighting for in Iraq is our democracy. The only constitution he is in Iraq fighting to defend is our Constitution. If my brother dies, it will not be for a mistake but rather because of his deeply held belief that the time it takes us as a people to figure out through democratic processes that we are wrong is more important than his own life." She closes her comments by reminding us, "My brother is doing his constitutional duty. Now it is time for us to do ours."
And now there are seven hundred fifty-five days, nine hours and forty-one minutes left in Pinhead's reign. The clock continues to run.

Papa's Got A Brand New Bag

A lot of people are going to remember James Brown as the Godfather of Soul. While I certainly understand his place as a giant in the music industry, this is not the way I will store his image. Instead, it is much more likely that I will remember him best as the pre-fight entertainment in "Rocky IV." It is during this scene that we are treated to the least of the pop singles generated by the Rocky series, "Living In America." The song reached number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and in 1986 the song was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best R&B Song and James Brown won a Grammy for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. Aside from the fact that it sounds like somebody ran an old funk groove over a John Mellencamp song, it also serves as the "swan song" for Apollo Creed. If only Apollo would have taken his fight with Ivan Drago as seriously as Rocky would (eventually) - maybe he's be alive today to fight in sixty year old Sylvester Stallone's newest boxing opus.
But that's all water over the metaphorical dam. The other very vivid memory I have of the hardest working man in show business is the little dustup he had in 1988: He was arrested following a high-speed car chase down Interstate 20 in Augusta. He was imprisoned for threatening pedestrians with firearms and abuse of PCP. Work hard, play hard, leave a really embarrassing mug shot behind.
Still, without James Brown, there would be no Prince, no Al Sharpton, no eyebrow tattoos. It would be a smaller, less danceable world. "I Got You - I Feel Good."