Prolific Contempt

There can be no doubt I'm writing fewer blogs lately. One problem with that is that when I finally get around to writing a new one, I have way too much to say, so I want to write more of a book right now than a blog, but I haven't the time. I want to rush it so I can take a shower and drop into my favorite restaurant for some Thai dinner before heading to work.What got me thinking about this newest blog is a movie based on Silas Marner, a short classic by George Elliot. I read the book some time in the past year, but only got around to watching the movie yesterday.

A Synopsis Which Will Spoil the Ending For You

Silas is a lonely weaver who prefers to be left alone. Through hard work he gradually collects a fortune but one day a rich man's son, having squandered a lot of money entrusted to him, wanders into Marner's cottage while the weaver is away and discovers the lonely man's fortune and steals it. The thief disappears, so his brother inherits their father's fortune... but this brother is not without blemish either, for he has a daughter he doesn't want anyone to know about because the mother is an opium addict of poor reputation. He's relieved when the mother dies from illness which frees him up to marry the woman he longs for. The little girl is then discovered by Marner the weaver and he adopts her. She becomes to him more precious than the fortune he lost. At the end of the book the body of the thief brother is discovered in a swamp less than a mile from Marner's cottage along with the gold he'd stolen. The money is given back to the weaver. By this time the little girl has blossomed into a happy beautiful young woman and her true father wishes to assume the role that biologically has been his all along. So he comes to visit Marner trying to persuade him to relinquish the daughter.So I watched the movie and I'm thinking how insane is it that this rich man would come over to the cottage and begin by apologizing on behalf of his brother for the theft of the weaver's fortune many years prior and then promptly endeavors to steal a much greater fortune, the lovely daughter!

But despicable as it was, I had to admit it didn't seem unrealistic. That's because lately I find myself particularly aware of how despicable people, in general, can be. Just an example, yesterday while approaching the parking garage where I work I stopped for two pedestrians crossing the street, a man and a woman. It seemed to me they were intentionally walking as slow as humanly possible. This kind of thing makes my vision go red and even white hot... for all the world like the planet belonged to them and it was my special privilege to have the pleasure of waiting for them to get the bloody fuck out of my way.

Now, there was a time when I could overlook anyone's faults just by reminding myself of the hell it seems each person has to endure at one point or another in their lives. Life isn't easy for any of us, I used to think, and so I would feel a brotherly compassion for virtually everyone. Shall I blame it on the aging process that I am no longer so understanding? Is that a part of growing older that I reach this point where I think, no, it hasn't got anything to do with your rotten childhood that you treat people the way you do, it's merely that you utterly suck!

I know people that seem to maintain a more even keel... like this one fellow, Chris that I play volleyball with at the YMCA. I don't know him real well, but I'm so irritable when I play because the egos out there exacerbate my equanimity righteously. I hate how people will critique my performance after every play. I mean in volleyball you make mistakes all the time... everyone does... I mean one team or the other is going to come up on the short end of every play so I'm like do we really want to articulate whose fault it is each and every time? To put this in perspective... I'm going on about 200 hours of volleyball with these people and I still haven't critiqued anyone after any single play. Certainly I've thought to myself on countless occasions "Gee, would it kill you to take at least one step toward making a play there?" but I don't say anything because... what the hell good does it do? Anyway... Chris plays with the same stupid cast of characters just about as frequently as I do and I notice how it doesn't seem to get to him. He has a way of shrugging it off... you know... not sweating the small stuff... and you know... I admire his style and maybe I'm learning from it too... hopefully.

But still I wonder if others have noticed this about growing older... that you lose a little of your inclination to give people a little slack and you begin to see assholes as assholes instead of people who are probably having a bad day.I'm opposed to making the aging process any easier than it already is. Like Sophia Loren, I believe if you feel aches and pains and soreness in your joints when you get up out of your seat, you have to just spring up like a kid anyway because once you surrender to that feeling of getting old, that's precisely when you get old. So... carrying that to my attitude... I think I'm going to have to fight that disgust with people that I've been cultivating. I'm going to have to.... groan.... be nice to people I can't stand.

Celebrty Cluster Death

There's a saying that celebrities die in three's. This week it was Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson. Pondering death. Pondering life. When we were kids, we didn't have TV so I never watched Charlie's Angels and didn't really know much about Farrah Fawcett, but my older brother was in love with her. Likewise when Michael Jackson took over the music scene in the early 80's I didn't have access to MTV and didn't know anything about his music. I understood that kids were dressing like him (including the wearing of only one glove). Ed McMahon I was a little more acquainted with in the mid 80's as I was secretly confiscating a miniature black and white TV each night and bringing it into my room and watching late night programming as deep into the morning as I could manage to stay awake. Can't say that I ever found him very entertaining, but there he was every night chatting with Johnny Carson.

Not only have they all left us in the time it takes to recover from last weekend's decadence, but I notice I'm getting used to this sort of thing. When you're a kid most of the celebrities that are old enough to pass away are too old for you to have ever heard of; not so when you grow up. When Jimmy Stewart died one day after Robert Mitchum in 1997, I was devastated. And when Princess Diana and Mother Theresa checked died only five days apart, I was shocked, but after a while you get a little desensitized. This is kind of what people do eventually... you know... when it's not living that they're doing anymore... when it's the alternative.

Yesterday at work I referred to one of my co-workers as Ms. Brinkley. I was just teasing her because her first name is Christy, but the joke was lost inasmuch as she'd never heard of the world famous pioneer of super-modeling, and she began questioning our other co-workers in pursuit of an explanation. A minute later she pounced on me with the discovery that Christy Brinkley is old! How could I have referred to her as an old person? In my signature smartass fashion I reasoned with her, "By far most of the people that have ever been born are dead now - compared to them, Christy is still a baby."

I just wanted to write a blog tonight, you know, during this blink of an eye during which, amazingly, I happen to share Christy Brinkley's statistically defiant status among the living.

Letterman Larger Than Life

This week a feud has developed between David Letterman and Sarah Palin because of jokes he made on his show about her and her family's visit to NY. One of the jokes disparaged her by indicating that she's trying to look like a slutty airline attendant, but the real transgression was when he said that the Yankees 3rd baseman, Alex Rodriguez, got her daughter knocked up during the 7th inning of a game. Not very funny. He didn't say which daughter but Piper was the one that went to the game with Sarah and she's only 14 years old, so the Palin family and their supporters were indignant and have attempted to rake Letterman over the coals for his perverted sense of humor.

So I'm a little torn here because I really like David Letterman's sense of humor. I think he's the king of sarcastic hilarity. He can make me laugh with just a facial expression. Hell, I boycotted Jay Leno for his entire tenure on the Tonight Show exclusively because he was given the throne vacated by Johnny Carson when I felt Letterman was more deserving. Leno was never in the same universe with Letterman when it comes to being funny.

And I don't like Sarah Palin. For all the accolades she collects as an accomplished governor in Alaska, all I saw from her on the campaign trail last year was a rabid little attack dog foaming at the mouth with derision for Barrack Obama, and it seemed to me that if I looked at her for more than two consecutive seconds, I could actually watch her head expanding with all the national popularity.

No excuses, though. Letterman should say he's sorry.