The Voice of Larry Munson

I hadn't heard the voice of Larry Munson in a long time before last night when I found myself listening to a lot of his old calls on YouTube, and I'd forgotten how much that voice means to me. Hearing it again, now, I feel three feet tall and like my hand is something small reaching for the big, thick palm of my father's, to guide me through a sea of red and black ebbing out of Sanford Stadium, past the old rail tracks and back toward the First Presbyterian Church. And that's what Munson's voice was: a constellation crackling through the radio, guiding an entire state through the course of an SEC season, unafraid to make football out to be more than it is. It sparkled. It flared. It cracked. And it bled. Rest in peace, Larry. We will surely miss you.

RIP Clarence Clemons

Bruce Springsteen won't be saying "Clarence, the sax man" anymore, and the E Street Band just lost all those shades of midnight blue and sunset pink. My parents' marriage just became a lot less intimate, and the world grew more silent. Clarence Clemons is dead. May he rest in peace, his love and compassion made the pain and hunger in Bruce's songs bearable.

Poet in the Post: Manute Bol

As tall as you were--
seventy-eight inches
from head to toe--
it was difficult
not to appear
as a shepherd
anywhere.

J.D. Salinger Dies at Age 91

My soul trembled awake. I'd read classics before, but I'd never read one that suggested the word classic is hollow, easily crushed, disposable as aluminum, and phony.

The cover of my copy wasn't as welcoming as a carousel; it was white with the title and author's name set in black, bold type. Bands of colored ribbon, like a formal rainbow, stretched across the top left corner. In truth, the cover was plain; akin to a black and white rerun in a world of Technicolor. Still, the title resonated, almost whispered, even appeared to budge, and that's what The Catcher in the Rye did--it budged me into a world of symbols; after all, its author once said of himself, "I am in this world but not of it."

The Catcher in the Rye performed the act of a ferryman in Greek mythology, taking young readers across a river, from what they knew into a world of what they would come to know, and the name given to the boat that would take all of us on this journey jumped out Mrs. Gordon's throat, like a frog from Calaveras County, when she told my tenth grade English class we would spend the next three weeks reading this book with the cover like white snow; and after every statement of conviction she made about the book she nodded her head with the repetitive assurance of Heaven and all its angels. We were not only about to be enlightened, but we knew we were about to be enlightened. Before we even opened the book, we expected, based on the connotations surrounding the its title, to be taken into another realm of thought, and the book delivered on all of this hype and anticipation. Of course, in delivering on this anticipation, this book and the books it led one to read slowly eroded what was left of one's innocence, and maybe that's one reason its author locked himself away from the world--his book was made to do the one act his famous protagonist despised the most. His book became the doorway through which one walked to become an adult reader.

Mrs. Gordon could have used a hundred other books to shove us off that cliff, but she didn't. To make us learn the lessons of Daedalus and Icarus, she chose The Catcher in the Rye, a book written by a man who shared so much with so little, was born on January 1, 1919, and died on January 27, 2010.

Ted Kennedy: A Good and Decent Servant

When Ted Kennedy gave the eulogy at his brother Bobby's funeral, he closed with these words:

"My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world."

As much as Ted claimed his brother Bobby would not wish to be idolized in death, one can assume Ted would also refuse deification and an endless heaping of praise, and with his flaws, it would be wrong to cage his life within the trappings of sainthood. Crowning the man in death would hide the tragic nature of his life and rob him of his weathered essence. Ships are meant to pass over the ocean, not to be encaged by bottles, and Ted Kennedy's story is one of a man who battled with the sea, day after day, year after year, because of Poseidon's wrath and his own flaws.

That being said, it was always difficult to pinpoint exactly what motivated the youngest of the Kennedy siblings to enter and remain in the political spotlight. When he first ran for the Senate, the maneuver appeared to be somewhat carried out because he didn't know what else to do as a Kennedy other than enter the political arena, but in the wake of his brothers' deaths, he held onto the family's political legacy with the desperation of a soldier not letting his army's flag touch the ground; he became a sure and steady leader, glistening with promise, like champagne on the bow of a ship. But the bubbly soon spilled into the murky waters of the Chappaquiddick, causing his efforts in the public arena to take on an air of rugged repentance. In his last years, time finally rewarded a man who always seemed cast in shadows, storms, and lightning with a legacy of respect and honor.

In the eyes of many, he became the last moor, holding the ship of liberalism close to these shores, and by liberal, I mean a man "who saw wrong and tried to fight it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it." Whether one agreed with his politics or all aspects of his personal life, Ted Kennedy wanted the best for his country and spent fifty years in the service of an American Dream, touched deeply by his own humanity. Teddy, your brothers would be proud.

Where's Walter? (Walter Cronkite, an American Voice)

When I heard Mr. Cronkite died, I wanted to write something terribly moving in his honor--something hopeful, beautiful, and inspiring.

I wanted to send a message to him on the airwaves, or I wanted to write my condolences on a prompt he could read from Heaven.

I wanted him to know that I read his voice as if it were a book I could curl up with in bed, as if it were typed on a page, by a type writer, and all our hearts were the letters on the keys; and the sounds of these keys, like teeth chattering on mettle, were: our thoughts, our worries, our doubts, our tears, our laughter, and our comfort.

I wanted to explain how Mr. Cronkite made sense out of the flurry of letters that fell from our ventricles like snowflakes in a blizzard. When we could not see our hand in front of our face, his voice reached out to us in our blindness.

That's what I wanted to write, but then I lost my narrative thread, leaving my car in midst of a snow storm, and I worried for three nights whether my thoughts about Mr. Cronkite would make sense to anyone other than me. He spoke in universal dialects; I speak in incomplete thoughts and mumbled fragments. I didn't know what to do, without Mr. Cronkite telling me "the way it is." After hearing he died, I struggled to know what came next in the story.

---------------------

That night, Billy, just back from Baghdad, puked on my couch. The vomit spilled out of his mouth like a helicopter toppling into the treetops of a Vietnam jungle. I would spend the next morning scrubbing the cushion like I was scrubbing the stains out of democracy and good intentions. I should have seen this coming. Billy reiterated to me several times, that despite his 250-pound frame, his tolerance just wasn't what it used to be. At dinner, he even grabbed my elbow and said, "things are starting to spin a little." With those words, I should have seen the blades of the helicopter being set into motion.

The lone fact that Billy had not sipped, gulped, or swallowed any alcoholic beverages during his eight month tour of duty, in and of itself, should have suggested that the number of beers and the shot of Jameson he had at dinner would cause a violent insurgency within his digestive track. I can even recall, on the way home from the restaurant, explaining to Billy, who at one point had a tolerance as honorable and determined as a D-Day invasion, that his drunkenness was not abnormal, that most people feel drunk after such a large number of drinks and that war had just transformed him into one of us--someone who happens to get drunk when they happen to drink large quantities of alcohol. A country that fights wars stands the chance of losing them. The equation is not a difficult one. No one gets drunk without alcohol, and casualties of war do not happen without the act of war.

The Tet Offensive Billy unleashed in my toilet was not surprising. The upheaval of alcoholic beverages from one's stomach can come on suddenly, as if the esophagus were being ambushed. Still, the worst part about vomiting, when drunk, is the humiliation that accompanies the act because the whole time it's happening, in the back of one's mind, there's the reoccurring thought that "I did this"--it didn't have to happen this way. Also, making matters worse for Billy was the fact that the chain connecting the toilet's handle to the flapper was busted and had been busted for a week. Sadly, it's gotten to the point where I take the lid off the tank and open the flapper myself habitually. Billy did not know this fact about my toilet or my lifestyle, so he probably wondered why when he pulled the lever his puke lingered in the toilet bowl. Freedom and democracy are complex ideas to explain when inside of a country used to living without them, and, often times, it's the bringer of such knowledge that winds up looking foolish, on their knees, before a toilet, pulling a lever that does not work because a chain they can not see is broken.

That was the first time Billy vomited that night. The second time, he got the couch and a bit of his pant leg. He was asleep on the couch, and I heard a gargle where a snore should have been. Then, I watched him foam at the mouth like Old Yeller, before I ran into the kitchen to get a trash bag. As I held the bag under his mouth, I noticed the stain on my couch, and I thought, "The Iraq War has finally found its way into my living room; f@#! you, Saddam!" Then, I thought how strange it is that the biggest sacrifice I had to make for a war that's lasted six years was a couch cushion. The Iraq War isn't the Vietnam War; I just knew Saigon better from films and books than I knew Baghdad, so I labeled the insurgency the Viet Kong because it sounded familiar. Why is it that we know past tragedies better than our own, and where is Walter to translate? Where is Walter to tell Billy not to worry about the couch?

At four in the morning, I heard the front door open and shut. I know it was four in the morning because I checked my cell phone. I got up. The couch was empty. Upon returning to bed, I stopped and used the bathroom. When I was done, I lifted the porcelain lid off the toilet's tank and pulled the broken chain.

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My right hand rotated over my shoulder blade and extended straight into the water, like an oar made out of flesh. Then, I did the same with my left, making my arms into paddles. I had to remind myself to kick all the way into the wall; my quads wanted to tighten into anchors. My left eye was closed because my left goggle started to leak a couple laps earlier, forcing me to wink creepily at two boys on the other side of the lane rope as I touched the wall and lifted my head out of the water.

"I beat you! I beat you so bad," the older one told me as I rubbed my hand through my thinning hair. His younger brother laughed hysterically. Two boys, who couldn't have been older than fourth graders, mocked my swimming abilities, as they clung to the wall for dear life.

"Yeah, you were definitely here first," I responded, trying to sound impressed when really I wanted to challenge the kid to an individual medley, which would have forced him to view me as a hero, when while lapping him, I saved him from drowning.

"Yeah, he was," chimed the younger one, adding, "and I would have beaten you even worse than he did."

"You probably would have, but what I wanna know is which one of you is faster." They both started bragging about their own swimming abilities and pounding their chests. It was an honor to be in the neighborhood pool with Michael Phelps and Mark Spitz, and, as I caught by breath, the two started their race.

The older one rarely put his face in the water. He basically splashed his arms around while toeing the bottom of the pool. If the younger brother ever lifted his head out of the water, he would have noticed that his older brother was not swimming and accused him of cheating. Instead, the younger one attacked the pool with vigor, but, despite the fact he was swimming and his brother was walking, he was only half a foot closer to the finish. He swam like a kid attacking someone much larger. He charged the water, and the water put its hand to his forehead, leaving him to swing in the air aimlessly. He exerted a lot of energy, but he didn't accomplish anything.

In the time it would have taken to read and fully understand the stimulus package and the bill on healthcare reform, these two Simon Birch's finally reached the other end of the pool. "I won! I told you I would win," yelled the older one. Personally, I couldn't tell which one had won. It appeared they reached the other end of the pool at the same time, as if their swimsuits shared the same drawstring. "No, you didn't. You cheated. You tried to drown me!" The lifeguards and I started laughing, as the political debate began.

The younger boy pleaded for their mother to change the result, "Tell him he didn't win. He pushed me down in the water." Her response was, "I can't settle all y'alls disputes, and if the lifeguard has to speak with you one more time, we're leaving." The lifeguard told them earlier that they were not allowed in the deep end because they could not swim. The mother misinterpreted this safety tip as a behavioral reprimand, probably because the fact her kids can't swim was actually an indictment on her as a parent more than anything else. The realization that she threw her kids into the pool without teaching them to swim left her in a bitter mood, and she did not feel like settling their petty dispute. Instead, she started making a pros and cons list that centered around the idea of being a mother, leaving her youngest to yell his story, "This is an injustice! You always tell us to play fair. He didn't and nothing happens. Isn't this an injustice?"

About this time, I gathered up my towel, t-shirt, and book and exited the pool, but, as I walked by the chain-link fence, I could hear the question "isn't this an injustice;" and I asked myself whether or not it was. Was the injustice what happened during the race, or was the injustice that these kids didn't know how to run their campaigns, in the water? Where was Walter to explain injustice is born when people go out into the world unprepared to deal with the challenges of living? And where was Walter to explain what responsibilities that places on the rest of us?

-----------------------

We didn't leave the ER until 4 am. We were there for three hours. The time could also be measured in five drunken phone calls, several text messages, a bottle of water, and how long it takes for a half inch cut on one's big toe to stop bleeding.

Counting, addition, and subtraction are the principles of basic mathematics, and, despite how many times students argue with their teachers that the world does not require math of them, it does; or it at least requires they know how to count. How else will they figure out how long they were in the ER or how many baseball tickets to buy for Saturday night's bachelor party?

The Best Man suffered a lapse in counting. We had ten tickets, but we needed twelve. The father of the Groom and the father of the Best Man were already inside the stadium, and Stan Yuengling called to say he would be late. The Best Man, being the best man, said he would go and buy two extra tickets that we could give to the patres familias. I, being one of three guys that would recognize Stan Yuengling, also remained outside the stadium. Then, Stan called again. He would be much later, so the Best Man and I decided to enter the stadium, using the tickets intended for the patres familias. I placed my ticket, from the original ten seats, in my pocket, but, first, I checked the seat number--#19.

All I had to do was give Stan the ticket for Section 41 Row F Seat 19.

When the Best Man and I got to our section, we tried calling the patres familias on their phones, but no one answered; so I gave him the Seat 19 ticket. He showed the usher the ticket and went down to exchange the tickets we just bought outside for the tickets the patres familias were currently seated. I got in line for a hot dog and a beer. The only reason I mention the hot dog and beer is because if not for them I would have checked the seat numbers on the two tickets the Best Man gave to me for Stan and I to use. But, because my hands were full, I just took the tickets. They turned out to be for Seats 23 and 24, and, when Stan tried to use them, the scanner beeped a sound that could only mean "REJECTED! REJECTED! REJECTED!"

Stan Yuengling and I did not sit down in our seats until the fifth inning. A person can not care about how a story ends if they do not know how it began. Without the beginning, the ending has no emotional context, which could be the reason why the most memorable parts of that Cubs-Nats game had nothing to do with the game. First, "The Know Your Nats" publicity campaign is hilarious and gave every male in the stadium a chance to scratch their balls. Second, I got a nosebleed. We were in the lower section of the stadium, not the nosebleed section. Weird? Ironic? I don't know. Maybe. In hindsight, it could be described as foreshadowing. Books are always written in hindsight, which is why they always foreshadow things. In the eighth inning, I just thought I had a nosebleed.

After the game, we headed for McFadden's, a bar near Georgetown. We walked a while before getting on the METRO. I remember someone making the comment that only half the group made a good choice in footwear, meaning only half of the group wore tennis shoes. I thought, "it's summer. Summer = sandals." I felt justified.

In the bar, I still felt justified when my right foot began to feel warm, like it was cloaked in sweat. I felt less justified when the sweat began to bubble in the space between my foot and the sandal. I felt even less justified when I reached down into that space and my finger tips came back red. Then, justification turned to worry as I began to feel a lot more drunk than I should have and started to get dizzy. My head wobbled a little, and the room started to rotate slowly, like helicopter blades. I tried to get the Bride's Brother's attention. I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and put both hands on my shoulders, "what's up?" Then, he pointed up, and I looked up. I shouldn't have looked up.

A girl standing on the bar poured liquor down my throat. The helicopter's blades began to create space between the chopper and the ground. "It's my foot."

"What's your foot?"

"My foot...something's wrong with my foot." I showed him the blood on my fingers. He took out his cell phone and shined it on my foot. Apparently, my footwear was now a red and black sock. My sandal was the same color, and the blood ran off my sandal, like rain from a gutter, into the puddles of alcohol on the floor.

An ER is not where one wants to be during a bachelor party, not that anyone ever wants to be in the ER, but one would at least expect an ER to be full of excitement. On this Saturday night, the ER was not full of excitement. George Clooney's big break was a series of unjustified lies. The ER was full of people sleeping, who walked to the bathroom like men with small prostates, in the middle of the night and drowsy from sleep. Also, the nurses in the ER aren't as helpful as the ones on television.

After I signed in, they told me to take a seat, without cleaning my foot. I was still bleeding. When the second nurse called me in to take my blood pressure and temperature, I was still bleeding. As he took my temperature, he called the first nurse on the phone and yelled at her, "we can't have this. You've got to clean these people up before having them track blood all over the waiting room." I was unaware I tracked blood all over the waiting room, so I started laughing, which caused the thermometer to drop out of my mouth. I was the Jimmy Fallon of patients and had to get my temperature taken twice. The next two hours I kept thinking this wait would be shorter if my buddy Horatio Sanz were around.

The first nurse then came by to clean my foot. She would have had an easier time cleaning it when I first came in; now, the blood was drying in black clumps that needed to be scrubbed off like grease from a frying pan. The same clumps began to dry on my sandal, making it hard to walk on because the clumps were forming into little teeth. My own blood bit me as I walked, and the only place I had to walk was the bathroom, which I used every time I had to go or needed to make a phone call. If the idea of making phone calls from a bathroom sounds dirty, then imagine I used the bathroom in a phone booth.

Speaking of communicating the fact that one is in the hospital, never leave messages or send messages that say, "in hospital...will be okay." I did that and it was a mistake, causing more harm than good. Where was Walter to communicate that I was fine and didn't want anyone to worry? The clumsy keystrokes of my heart caused worry without Walter around to translate them.

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On Sunday afternoon, with my toe bandaged, my girlfriend and I sat down for a picnic. We both had sandwiches and Dominion Ginger Ale, from Earl's, in Arlington. Moments like that allow one to feel like Neil Armstrong, but where was Walter to express my joy?

Without him around, I told her that sitting there with her was the best part of my weekend. She then asked me, "Is it me or the sandwich?" Not wanting to be completely vulnerable, I told her it was 40% her and 60% the Pork and Fries sandwich. No one wants to be entirely vulnerable.

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Novelists place narrator's in their books to guide the reader, and, from 1916 to 2009, Walter Cronkite was a narrator. His voice, like a typewriter ribbon, bandaged our wounds, and, last night, as I unwrapped the dressings around my toe, I couldn't help but feel more exposed than ever. Going from the 20th century into the unknown will require all of us to walk with the courage of Walter Cronkite, for it was his steady courage that allowed him to understand the human condition and let his audience know the times in which they lived.

Steve McNair 1973-2009

(If the video doesn't play, here's the link. It's one of the better done tributes I've seen.)

The first time I heard of Steve McNair, he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated, underneath him was the headline "Hand Him the Heisman," and I latched onto him. He was one of those guys who never played for one of my teams but I always rooted for him to do well. Maybe it was because in the 1994 Heisman race McNair represented little Alcorn St., a HBCU, while the other candidates hailed from Colorado, Penn. St., and Alabama. Alcorn St. wasn't a division one school, let alone one of prominence. McNair's football talents and heart took him places that his background predicted he would never go, and he took his fans there with him; he gave the underdog a chance to dance in the spotlight.

In middle school, I used his Tennessee Oilers in Franchise Mode on Madden. I got bored playing with the Packers teams because they were too stacked. The Oilers weren't great, but they had McNair and Eddie George, which made them fun to play with in a video game. What I liked most about both of those guys was that it took a whole defense to bring either one to the ground.

McNair was a fighter. He was the first quarterback taken in the 1995 draft, and he sat on the bench his first years in the League, behind Chris Chandler. McNair proved that the greatest attributes for a young quarterback are the patience to wait for one's moment and the dedication it takes to truly learn the game. McNair was the first major move that Coach Jeff Fisher made for the Oilers franchise, and one could argue that without McNair's physical sacrifices on the field Fisher would not be the longest tenured coach in the NFL. McNair's stellar play transformed the Oilers into the Titans, which means that with McNair as quarterback the franchise went from chokers to Super Bowl contenders.

He was, is, and always will be the cornerstone of the Tennessee Titans.

McNair's last years in Tennessee saw his physical abilities decline. He looked stiff in the pocket, as if he was already a statue, dipped in bronze, guarding the stadium's outside sidewalks. He limped off the field and let his shoulders drop like bags of sand. His tenure with the Titans passed all too quickly. He missed his first Pro Bowl due to injury. He shared his one MVP award, and his team came up a yard short in the Super Bowl, and he failed to be the savior at quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens, yet we all remember him as a man of tremendous accomplishments because he sacrificed every second for his team.

In Super Bowl XXXIV, McNair took a beating from a St. Louis Rams team that was far more talented than McNair's Titans squad, but he kept making play after play, earning the admiration of his teammates and the fear of his opponents.

Steve McNair had our respect because no matter how dire the situation he always had more to give. He donated countless dollars and minutes to underprivileged children, and he helped rebuild parts of the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. He played football the way he lived life. At times, he was reckless and made choices that put his body in danger, apparently on and off the field, but he always bounced back; and he always had the love of his teammates and his community, which suggests he listened to the angel in his heart more than the devil on his shoulder.

Rest in peace, Steve. You laid it all on the line, and we were the better for it. You showed us that the battle with adversity is equal to the victory over it. I am sad to see another hero from my childhood go, especially in such a heedless act of violence.

Hand him peace.

Michael Jackson: What Happens When Ghosts Die?

First, I made sure to wear my G.I. Joe sunglasses, to aid with my cool factor, and socks, so my feet would slide easier over the floor. Thing is, carpets create too much friction to moonwalk over no matter what footwear one chooses, which prompted me to climb on top of my mom's cedar chest that sat by the window. I climbed up on the chest, did a spin move, and then moonwalked my way from one end of the cedar dance floor to the other. I ended by freezing with one arm extended into the air and the other extended to the floor, with my pinkie and index finger out stretched. I imagined that to anyone on the other side of the window I looked exactly like a silhouette of Michael Jackson. I wanted to be Michael Jackson. I was four years old.

The outpouring of praise for Michael Jackson has been as steady and beautiful as a river since his death. Fans and celebrities from all over the world have poured their droplets of adoration into streams and creeks, hoping that in death their idol finally knows that he was loved and cherished.. Michael Jackson was one of the most captivating entertainers, performers, and artists of the last forty years. No one can deny that, and no one can deny that he revolutionized the field in which he worked and slaved for perfection. He was as strong a force the music industry has ever known. He was the King of Pop.

Through the avenue of music, Michael Jackson transcended boundaries of race, gender, genre, and nationality. Strangely, one could argue that he transcended these boundaries so thoroughly that his own body began to resemble a world without boundaries. The jokes are endless about how the pigment of Jackson's skin went from black to white. The changes were evident to anyone who owned Thriller, bought Bad five years later, and held them up side by side. Regardless of whether the changes to Jackson's complexion, nose structure, and hair were cosmetic or due to medical issues, they made his audience unable to take their eyes off him for reasons more than just his immense talents, and it it wasn't just that he appeared to change races. When one watches Michael's video for "Scream," there are moments in the video when he clearly appears more feminine than his sister Janet and vice versa. Joseph Conrad once wrote of his character Kurtz, "he kicked himself loose from the earth," meaning that Kurtz no longer heeded physical boundaries of any sort, making himself limitless in his potential. In many ways, Michael Jackson's talents gave him limitless potential. Kurtz becomes unnerved by so much freedom and the evils he could act out in its name. Now Michael Jackson is not a Kurtz, but the stranger his appearance became the more he strayed from societal norms.

Michael Jackson became not male, not female, not black, not white, but a ghost of himself as an entertainer and as a human being. His last major work that was both critically and commercially successful was his 1991 album Dangerous, that was almost 20 years ago, but, on CNN, FoxNews, VH1, and MTV, broadcasters, critics, and other entertainers keep commenting that Michael's death is an example of a genius' life cut short and compare the situation to Elvis' death. When both of these men died, they peaked creatively long before their deaths, becoming shades of their former selves on and off the stage. Neither man died happily or satisfied, and perhaps the reason is because they didn't live too short, but too long.

The end of that last paragraph sounds cold, but the Michael Jackson that died on Thursday was not the Michael Jackson who burst onto the scene singing "ABC easy as 123," mesmerized the world with just a green strobe light behind him, made zombies dance in the streets, or brought LA gang members into his videos. The Michael Jackson that died this past Thursday had "kicked" himself so far beyond the norms of society that he dangled his own children over ledges, repeatedly made himself vulnerable to child molestation charges, and even went as far as to say that there's nothing wrong with sharing one's bed with a child. The artist who once sang "There comes a time...when the world must come together as one" became the propagandist who accused Sony Records of being racists and Devils because he blamed them for the failure of his 2001 album Invincible, when Sony actually promoted his album more than most. As Jackson looked and acted more bizarre, much of the general public found it hard to focus on his talents anymore. While Michael's music could still bring people together on the dance floor, his actions as a person made him more and more divisive. His personal life, which was once the sideshow, became the main event as he metamorphosed into the Elephant Man's bones, having failed to acquire the remains of a past "freak," he became the "freak" of the present.

As a kid, I was not a patient person, and the thing I had the most trouble waiting for was to get on roller coasters. I hated twisting and turning and zigging and zagging through the turnstiles that every amusement park herds its customers. The only time I enjoyed this grazing ritual was in line for the Georgia Cyclone at Six Flags; they repeatedly played Michael Jackson's "Black or White" video the whole time I was in line. Standing in 90 degree, humid heat, we all watched one of the greatest entertainers the world has ever seen and forgot that we were actually in line for something else. Michael Jackson is one of few people to have that rare talent to capture the attentions and imaginations of people no matter what they are doing. Sadly, he often captured our minds in ways that were detrimental to anyone who wanted him to be perfect, the children whom he may have harmed, and to himself. The attention he truly needed from the world was psychological help, and he needed it years ago.

Michael Jackson died Thursday, but doesn't it feel like the world started mourning for him years ago? The image of him as Captain Eo, at Disney World, is an apparition of the past. His heroism left this planet long before his body did, when he chose to live in a fantasy world he called Neverland. He chose to join a world of mermaids, pirates, and boys who can't grow old, and our willingness to overlook the strangeness of his crossing over into a realm of fantasy and inappropriate behaviors while his body was still on this earth and a member of society is a testament to two things: Michael Jackson's transcendent talents and the ability of the human head and heart to forgive and forget. These last few days show that in death people focus on the positive and leave the judgements for God, which begs the question:

Is death the only event that triggers understanding and forgiveness?

Rest in peace, Michael. I wish you could have found peace years ago. I wish we could have helped you before your life spiraled into something as haunting as a ghost story. Your existence as an artist should not have been an excuse to live with untreated pain.

Atlanta Braves Announcer Skip Caray Dies

Memory works on us delicatley, in our sleep, through dreams. In my mind, a film projector plays the reels of my childhood, and I can hear two sounds. One is similar to that of a train's climb up the first hill on an old, wooden roller coaster. It's the sound of clanking chains, spinning gears, and creaking timbers. It's the harsh whisper of a machine. The second sound is a voice that allows me to smell freshly cut grass in April, feel the sun tanning my skin in July, and to taste the crispness of cool autumn air in October.

This voice holds in one syllable the exuberance of a sprout breaking through the soil for a chance at life and the decay of a leaf turning from green to red to brown as a victim of how life always ends, and because this voice holds these two extremes together in one moment, it is the stopping of the clock. It is forever the hopes of the first pitch on opening day, and the painful failures of last place and losing the World Series again and again and again.

When I hear Skip Caray call a Braves game, there is no tic and there is no toc. There is only baseball.

He was the voice of my Atlanta Braves for over three decades, and he passed away this past Saturday; and he will be missed because he offered hope and romanticism in the face of life's inevitable mechanics. He narrated the summers with a style and grace for all of us Braves fans who stayed up late listening to TBS.

When the 1980's made us believers in the harsh realities of historical determinism, he was our voice of reason and understanding. If the gears of the roller coaster were hurtling us forward in a manner that made us want to hurl, then he calmed our stomachs, saying, "as long as you promise to patronize our sponsors, feel free to walk the dog." He knew when we were in for a rough ride, and he never lied about it. He talked us through it.

Skip Caray also made the good times better. When the roller coaster made us giddy on adrenaline, he taught us to embrace euphoria, yelling, "Braves win! Braves win! Braves win!"

Skip made the moments like Francisco Cabrera and Sid Bream into things of magic and miracle because he showed us unabashedly that, yes, it is okay to care this much about something such as baseball. These moments do matter because we feel them in our blood and in our stomachs, like the highs and lows of those wooden-framed fortresses we invade as kids to prove our courage and our might. These moments when we overcome the impossible and beat the Pittsburgh Pirates show us that we are tall enough to ride through life.

Skip assured us of this, and he did it with such ease: "Andruw Jones, on his horse"..."a chopper to Chipper"..."and we're out of the inning, but it sure would be nice to have some insurance."

Skip was our insurance through the good and the bad, and if there's baseball in heaven, then he's calling a game with his dad right now; and in that game, there is no roller coaster track that leads to an end, there is no set number of innings, no game seven's, no first places, and no last places, just one, unending game of baseball.

I watch and listen to it in my dreams.
(Wait for Skip at the end of the video. It's just a classic call from a classic announcer, and if anyone can find a better clip of this, let me know. RIP Skip)

The Dark Knight @ a glance

I'll need to see the film a few more times before I start making concrete caveats about it, but The Dark Knight is a film that stretches its themes well beyond its genre, which is what good art does, and Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker demands that this "comic book movie" be looked at as art. His Joker is not a bank robber, a desperate man in need of attention, or simply out to foil the Batman; he is, as Alfred describes him, "[a man who] just wants to watch the world burn." This Joker's intention is to conduct a psychological study in how to create anarchy and see how many chaotic choices between life and death can the human psyche take before it pitfalls into madness. The thing is, this Joker is conducting his psychological studies without taking notes or writing doctoral theses. There is no end goal, but flame and smoke. Nothing.


Heath Ledgers's portrayal of the Joker takes the character well beyond the normal archetype of a comic villian. He is not motivated by past failures or revenge like the villians of the Spiderman trilogy, and he is not after control or power as the Scarecrow was in Batman Begins. Afterall, his greatest pleasures in the film are a result of Batman taking control from him. He seems happiest when Batman takes the detonator out of his hand or is able to rescue the hostages because it brings the Joker back to ground zero, where, as Yeats writes, "all the ladders start." The Joker wants to be at ground zero, so he can build his ladders, only to burn them once they begin to resemble some sort of order. He's not trying to go anywhere and that makes him scarier than any normal villian.

He's more Colonel Kurtz from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness than he is criminal: "There was nothing either above or below him...He had kicked himself loose of the earth." In fact in the Joker's last scene, the only thing holding him in existence is the rope Batman ties him up with. If not for that, then the Joker would be totally free, physically, as well as mentally. In other words, this Joker never fears death. In fact, he probably prefers it because the experience is completely unknown.

And while Heath's Joker hung upside down my eyes began to sweat. Here was Heath Ledger lighting the screen on fire, hanging from a rope that somewhat resembles a fuse, and I had smoke in my eyes. I don't know if playing this role unnerved something in Ledger's mental state. I'm sure case studies have been done, are being done, and will be done that will try and say playing this role was the death of him. Personally, I would assume something was already wrong, waiting under the surface, before he took part in this film. Either way it seems fitting that after such a performance his last scene features him suspended in air, not a part of this world and not a part of the next, which is where art exists, filling in the gaps between humanity, imagination, and God.

I feel one has to admire the man's daring to push himself to the brink, as selfish as that sounds, and his willingness to completely embrace a character forces so many questions that stretch beyond the pages of comic books: how do we deal with people like the Joker? what are we willing to give up in the face of something that goes well past evil? at what price is great art made? is there any way to keep one's moral boundaries alive and well in a world such as this? what's the difference between the hero we deserve and the hero we need?

We needed this performance, Heath, but I'm not sure we deserved it; and we may never understand how far you had to go in giving it to us.

(P.S. This movie seemed as much about Gotham City as it did about our relations with the Middle East and China)