All Hallow's Eve

I don't remember if it rained that Halloween. The weather outside was not the issue. It was the weather inside that was the issue: dark and stormy with a one hundred percent chance of grief. We were mourning the loss of our roommate and beloved fellow traveler on the highway of fun which came to an abrupt end the week before. What better way to commemorate the end of the party by throwing one?
We started early, with our tribute to our fallen friend, before dinner. We were drinking before the first guests arrived. If we did eat, it was the Cheetos that we had dragged home along with all the alcohol we could carry. When it came to dragging alcohol home, we were champs. When at last there was a knock on the door, the first in a steady stream of well-wishers and fellow mourners began to file in. We had done this dozens of times before, but never with a dead guy as the focus. Parties were a way of life in that apartment. Work and school were just annoying interruptions sprinkled into the cycle of festivals we maintained. No weekend was too long or too short, and if Bruce Springsteen's birthday fell on a weeknight, our neighbors would just have to understand.
There was also the little matter of our lease. When we moved in, we were splitting the rent three ways, with a little larger share taken on by our departed friend because he got his own room. Now we were faced with the potential of having to make up that difference ourselves. As a full-time student, part-time video store employee and itinerant hungry drunk boy, I knew that the chances of me figuring out a way to swing that was out of the question. Unless that question started with, "Mom and Dad?"
So there was this thought, not a clear one, but a thought that if we simply ratcheted up the misbehavior a notch or two that we might be asked to leave rather than begging for release from our commitment. We had already done this, showing up to the leasing office with our grim faces, sackcloth and ashes. Our landlord wasn't flinching. This was a college town, after all, and the middle of a semester was not the time to have an empty apartment. The company wouldn't allow it. Policy, and all that.
It was with this corporate torment along with our very real grief that we hit the dance floor in our living room that night. We raged into the night, conspicuously aware of our predicament: We were survivors. Though we wore this distinction as a badge of honor when it suited us, but its weight dragged us down. Finally, when everyone else had filed out, toasts made and tears shed, we were left in that wreck of a living room. Alone again. Sometime just before noon the following day we made our way into the light of a new day, a new month, and began collecting the bottles, cans and crushed Cheetos that bore witness to our attempts to pierce the veil. We couldn't bring our friend back, and we couldn't dull the pain. We were stuck right where we were.
A month later, our landlord agreed to let us go. Apparently the chance to get in and hose down our apartment to get it ready for the next crop of underclassmen felt opportune for them. There was no eviction. There was no cathartic last bash to send the demons packing. We packed up our stuff and moved to separate corners of the city: me on the south, my friend on the north. Though we got together from time to time to experience the wild times one more time, it never felt quite like that Halloween.

Eye Of The Beholder

I have read some of the fan outrage at the "brutal deaths" that occurred on the first episode of The Walking Dead's seventh season. I don't want to spoil anything for anyone, but let's just say that some people died. Since the title suggests this is half the premise of the show, it really shouldn't come as a surprise. It is the fictionalized account of a group of survivors. In six previous seasons, the body count has been profound, and as our little band has made its way through the post-apocalyptic wasteland, the body count has been significant. Four of the original seven main cast has been sacrificed to the sake of story. Of the fourteen members of season one's supporting cast, only two are still walking.
I suppose I have to applaud the writers of this television show for keeping folks interested in watching what is a slow and steady march into the gates of, well...The loss of a wife or trusted friend has been tempered with the regular and explicit dispatch of dozens if not hundreds of zombies that seem to remain an issue despite our courageous band's best efforts to find safe haven. Even though we all understand in this world your are just a sprained ankle or a stray arrow from a crossbow away from being part of the latex-shrouded extras.
It brings to mind something about which my father once complained. He was trying to relate his disgust and dismay at the movie he had just been to see. He went on and on about how violent and depraved it was. "No redeeming social value," he sniffed. The title of the film? Natural Born Killers, directed by Oliver Stone from a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino. The redeeming social value aside, I wondered what my father might have been expecting when he paid for is ticket and walked through the lobby in the direction of the marquee that was full of that phrase: Natural Born Killers. If he had been anticipating a nature documentary about carnivores in the wild, the posters with a bald, sneering Woody Harrelson could have been a tipoff that it wasn't going to be a Disney movie.
When people tune in to watch "The Walking Dead," what part of that message are they missing? Sure, I can remember what it's like to lose your favorite character in whatever tragic or amusing accident or assassination. My wife and I drifted away from ER after all those years of must-see TV. We didn't recognize any of the hard-working and even harder living doctors and healthcare professionals who went in and out of those sliding emergency room doors. There were apparently only a certain number of times that getting a blood chem and a chest tube stat that can sustain a viewer's interest. Our interest, anyway.
So you say that things have become too brutal on the show about brain-gobbling zombies and their warm-blooded prey? You could try testing your mettle with something a little edgier. Kevin James has a new show.

Obsessed With Sex

Newt Gingrich would like us to know that we are, or at least those of us who would bother to bring up Donald J. Tremp's more prurient topics instead of the more salient points of his public policy. That's what he was telling Megyn Kelly in a testy little back and forth on Tuesday evening. While most right-thinking Americans should have been focusing their attentions on baseball, Megyn and Newt were arguing about who had the problem and why. For her part, Ms. Kelly responded to Gingrich's assertion thus: “I think your defensiveness on this may speak volumes, sir,” she said. “No, no, let me make my point. And then I’ll give you the floor. What I said is if Trump is a sexual predator, then it’s a big story. And what we saw on that tape is Trump himself saying that he likes to grab women by their genitals and kiss them against their will.” 
Advantage Megyn, and not just because of her journalistic standpoint. She was speaking as a victim of sexual harassment herself. If there was a gap in our collective understanding of what has been going on in presidential politics for the past six months, it could be that Newt actually has a point. Maybe we are far too concerned with the personal lives of celebrities and consenting adults. Sex sells. Ask Don Draper. Or better yet, think of how many people tuned in each week to watch this duplicitous rake love, leave, crash and burn in ways that would make Don Trumper green with envy. Which would be kind of nasty, since all that orange would make brown mixed with the green.
Are we ignoring Bill Clinton and all his crimes and misdemeanors? Probably, but since it is his wife who is currently running for the highest office in the land, why not focus on her economic plan or her experience as Secretary of State? 
And here's the feedback in which I am currently stuck. With all these accusers coming forward to point a finger at our not quite admitted adulterer, Donald P. Trumj. He wants to dismiss one as "a porn star." Well, at least she's a star. I can't imagine anything less. Especially if it didn't happen. And then the rejoinder, “Oh, I’m sure she’s never been grabbed before.” And just when did you stop groping porn stars, Mister Truhhh?
I'm sorry for dragging you all through this most unpleasant dissertation, and I hope that soon we will return to the more polite and well-regarded conversations about how much we all hate bananas, but sometimes, a banana is just a banana or a substitute for something much much worse.

Police Line

"Didn't you see the yellow Police Line tape?"
I had, in fact, and the reason the officer was asking me about it was that I had ducked underneath it and was attempting to make my way across the intersection without having to go eight blocks out of my way to get to school.
"I wouldn't want to have to cite you," continued the man in blue.
I apologized and looked for a way around. "I'm trying to get over to Brookdale and I," he cut me off.
"You need to go back up to the corner behind the tape."
I probably made some sort of face that read as frustration, but I was working to stay within the letter of the law. It is my way, after all.
Did I mention that it was raining?
The officer sighed and directed me back up the street, "Then cross over to the other side. Do you see all these tow trucks? I don't anyone to be injured."
I appreciated his concern, especially since it seemed as though it could have come in handy for the occupants of the car that was being loaded on the flatbed trailer.
I retreated back up the street and found the other side blocked by the two inch wide strip of yellow tape. I contemplated the ersatz barrier and considered my options. This was the way I had been instructed to go, and it was free of debris and additional police activity. I bent down and rolled my bike into the danger zone.
For the next thirty feet, I expected to be hollered at and told to turn back, pending the issuance of a citation. When I made it around the corner and went back under the tape on the other side, I considered the stress that the officers were under and the relative politeness with which my transgression was met. At six on a rainy morning, after having been on the scene for five hours, he was probably tired and ready to get home to someplace warm and dry. Away from the scofflaws trying to pick their way through their perimeter.
Would it have killed me to go the extra mile around?
Would it have killed him to give me a helpful direction?
Would the mess be cleaned up by the time I rode home?
Compared to the victims of the crash, I was worried over nothing.
I rode on into the darkness.

Facts Of Life

"Son?"
"Yes dad?"
"It's time we sat down and had a little talk."
"But dad, I'm right in the middle of -"
"Never mind about that. Come on over and sit down."
"Okay, dad."
"Now, you're getting to be quite the young man all of a sudden. Am I right?"
"I guess so."
"And you're starting to notice the girls. Am I right?"
"Aw Dad, I don't know."
"And they're starting to notice you, I bet."
"C'mon, dad."
"Well, it just makes sense, you know. You are my son, after all."
"Yeah."
"I think it's time for you to know a few facts of life."
"Okay."
“We all know guys that have had conversations with other guys that go a little bit in that direction.”
"What direction is that?"
"You know. 'Locker room talk.'"
"Okay." 
"When you see a pretty girl and you, um, might want to take her shopping - for furniture."
"Yeah?"
"And you want to move on her, and maybe grab her and kiss her, you know."
"Yeah."
"Well you go right ahead, because when you're a celebrity you can just get away with that kind of thing."
"Really."
"You bet."
"Even if they're married?"
"Especially if they're married."
"Gee, I dunno."
"Well son, I'm glad we had this little talk."
"Yeah. Me too. I guess."

Hack, Hack, Hack

How you doin', America? A few days back there was an attack on the very fabric of our society. Hackers disrupted Al Gore's Internet last Friday and it made for some pretty tough sledding out there. People were without access to their Twitter accounts for several hours. Spotify and Reddit were also impacted. If you didn't notice, you're probably not my son.
My son's contact with his world comes through his phone, and access to these forms of social media are the means of his communication with his peers. The idea that he might have to speak directly to another human being is a daunting one for him, and many of his generation. Faceless authorities tell him what to buy as well as when and where. He has become a fount of information for those of us too old or slow to lift our phones to our face and type on those tiny keyboards. His knowledge of engine compression is impressive for a father who spent years collecting pop culture tidbits if only for the chance to regurgitate them at some opportune moment and appear clever.
Which is really the purpose of Twitter, after all. Denying celebrities and a vast nation of would-be Oscar Wildes. I suspect that for those anxious moments last week, there were millions of pithy comments that had to be cast aside or set on ice for use later when connection with the pithyverse was reestablished.
Even more frightening was the fact that Amazon.com was out of commission for a similar amount of time, which means that the fifty-four ounce bag of Skittles you needed for the weekend was put in jeopardy. Do what you will with the National Security Agency and its vast storehouse of confidential material, but don't mess with my Skittles pipeline.
In real life, my world was impacted when the kids in the school's computer lab were unable to reach the website I had so carefully selected for them the week before. Explaining to a ten-year-old that there were bad people called "hackers" who were trying to disrupt digital communications turned out to be surprisingly easy. This is, after all, the world in which they have been brought up. They were born into a society that curses their handheld computers that don't receive signals from outer space as quickly as they might like, and they look forward to a time when all information can be digested in pill form, bypassing that whole listening function.
Then it was over. As quickly as it came on. Firewalls were restored and IP addresses were returned to their regular dependable state. And my son breathed out again.

Joy In Mudville

"Do they still play the blues in Chicago?" That was the musical question asked by Steve Goodman back in 1983, when the team from the north side was in the midst of another season of mediocrity, finishing the year with seventy-one victories in one hundred sixty-two games. It was the next year, 1984, that Cub fans sat up and took notice. They got twenty-five more wins and took first place in the National League East. Steve Good man passed away just days before his beloved Cubbies clinched the division.
From there, it was a short five game series loss to the San Diego Padres before returning to the lower echelon of the NL East the next year. That one season was enough to make me believe the words of Mister Goodman:
"You know the law of averages says
Anything will happen that can"
That's what it says
"But the last time the Cubs won a National League pennant
Was the year we dropped the bomb on Japan"
I bought my first Cubs jersey, and placed a renewed emphasis on the story of my grandfather's obsession with the team that would eventually break apart his tenuous marriage to my grandfather, sending my father packing west to Colorado where would eventually marry my mother and raise up a whole new crop of unwitting Cubs fans. All because of that last trip to the World Series. The Cubs certainly helped pave an interesting curve in my family's path. 

Now, seventy-one years after that fact, the Chicago Cubs return to the World Series for the first time since anyone can accurately recall. This is an opportunity to tear down another ivy-covered wall that has kept them from winning it all since 1908. More than one hundred years. No one I know can remember that one, but now is the time to create new memories.

As I sat on the couch, talking on the phone to my older brother who carries the torch just a little higher than I do, we relished the moment and spoke of the past. We both took great solace and pride that our wives would happily encourage us to take off to see a World Series game without formfitting our marriages. These women understood, or at least they pretended to, which worked for us both in a pinch. It took me a while to move past the award ceremony and the post-game celebrations an interviews. In those moments, I sensed an extra weight on the couch with me: my father on one side and my grandfather on the other. A third generation was witnessing the impossible. There was joy in Mudville.