Dear Beer:

And I have nothing to cry in...

Hi,

Okay. Yeah, this is kinda weird...

I take it from you not accepting my "friend request" that you are pissed.

I don't blame you.

I left in a hurry. As I so often did, I had my way with you all night and then, in the morning, pretended that I didn't know you.

"You had your share of beer last night?" My wife would ask.
"Not really." I'd scoff...Only to return to you the next afternoon, slobbering with need.

I wanted to explain my departure but I knew that If I saw you, if I approached you, I would've wanted to have you, and then, we wouldn't have been able to keep our hands off each other. If I didn't just close the door on us, I never would've left.

Let me say, that in all the years I was with you, I was true. Know that. Other than a few youthful mistakes with Jaegermeister and Jell-O Shots, I was yours and yours alone. Once even, in the midst of a crazy night with you on Hampton Beach, so in love I was, that I almost had you tattooed on my bicep- looking all sexy with a foamy head in a frosty mug.

I gave myself to you fully...

I could be up with you until three in the morning, exhausting myself in your thrills before I would fall helplessly to sleep on the mattress, only to wake the next day and by two in the afternoon be longing to see you again.

The first time I met you it was seventh grade, one of my older brother's friends introduced us, you were with him, I remember, but he let me sip you and instantly...I had to have you.

When he went to the bathroom, I took you from under his chair and poured you in a cup and ran outside.  We hit it off right away. I finished you right there.

"Where's my fuckin' beer?" I heard the friend say from inside the house, but we just giggled with laughter.

"He's always so angry." You said, "I just want a guy who's fun and happy."
" I can guy that be." I tipsily spoonerized. And we broke down again in laughter. (Remember the early days? We laughed all the time.)
"When can I see you again?" I asked.
"I'll always be here..." You said. And you were.

Holidays. Hook-ups. Break-ups. Wakes. Weddings. Wednesdays.

I could take you to the fanciest restaurants or the  diviest dives. All that mattered was that we were together.

We spent so much time together that my friends could hear your influence in the way I talked...

"That's the beer talking!" They'd say.
"No, it's not!" I'd protest. But I knew. It's not that I wasn't proud of you, it's just... when people see your love, you get scared.

I know it's been twenty months and I'm sure you've moved on and found plenty of others ( I was always so jealous of how others saw you..."Let's have another beer..." How dare they? I wanted you all to myself), so you don't care...but our relationship took a toll on me, too.

I gave. Did you see me out running to the gym every night? No, I was with you. Did I push you out for a glass of wine and salmon dinner  with a side of broccoli? No. Why? Because you didn't get along with them!

I gobbled wings and chinese food and pizza, because they were your friends!

But where was I? I was dwindling away and in my place was a bloated, incontinent goat who belched and farted and, to embarrassing effect, failed to clear the google search history.

He took my phone and called all my friends telling them what he didn't like about them;  he even reached out to distant, short-lived acquaintances making strange requests at odd hours, getting me in near- fights with angered boyfriends and brothers.

Every few years you rendered my wardrobe obsolete. You lingered with me for mornings, hovering between my fellow passenger on the train and me. "You want a piece of gum? How 'bout a mint?" I heard more times than can be recalled. But I just thought they were being friendly! That's how much control you had over me...the denial.

Am I to blame? Sure! Could I enjoy you with other people? Did I not steal you away?

 Oh, I tried: happy hour I'd be everybody's buddy, but by last call, I was yanking you all over the bar, telling everybody that I owned you.

"Don't even think of taking that fuckin' beer, bouncer boy...it's mine!"

But that's you! That's me! That's us!

Somebody once said to me "You always have a beer in your hand." I smiled and took you right to my lips. Remember? I realize now that they didn't mean it in a good way...

Sure there were lots of good times with you, beer. But when the bad times started outnumbering those good ones, I had to look at the truth of our relationship.

I'm sure I lost my virginity when I did because of you. But I also blew the opportunity with at least a half-dozen others because you made your presence known. ("Is there something the matter?" echoes in my head).

Yes, you made me more charming than I was so many times. But you also confiscated my filter to the displeasure of dinner party guests, elderly relatives and foreigners.

Ok, and I'm thankful that you gave me the courage to face men who in sober daylight I'd think twice of tangling with... but at the expense of my coordination? ("Owww!")

And while you showed me an exhilarating night here and there, you'd keep me from the light of day the next morning.

In the end, is that love? Or is it just insatiable lust?

Bonnie and Clyde. George and Martha. Scott and Zelda. Paul and Beer.

Complicated and sad.

I'm angry for the hurt you caused, but I do miss you.

Sometimes I'll be watching an old movie and I'll see Steve McQueen hoisting you; you in your sixties brown bottle with indistinguishable label and I'll reach for the screen.

Why can't I be like McQueen and sip the thing? And then I get the answer in the following love scene:  McQueen taking his time, kissing Faye Dunaway passionately and cleanly. Had that been me with Faye,  five seconds into that beautifully cinematic kiss, I'd be dry-humping her leg.

So, when I say: It's me, not you. Believe me, it's me, not you. You are who you are. You're meant for those people who can enjoy for an hour after softball or those can hang out with you as they coil the lines and scrape the barnacles off the 24-footer.

Enjoy your intricacies.

Me? I'm a glutton. Always have been: As a kid at Easter,  I would shove an entire row of marshmallow peeps in my mouth out fear that my brother would pull off one of the confectionary chicks for himself.

So, it's good bye. Maybe I'll see you again when I'm 70 or so, and I limp into the local VFW.

And "We talked about the 'ol times and we drank ourself some beers..."

Sounds good.

But for now, let's live.

Yours,

Paul

How To Win A Fight

Winner and still champion...

I.

It's been a little while, I know...

Maybe it was the last time you got cut off in traffic. Or maybe it was at your wife's high school reunion and that guy made that comment in the men's room, not knowing you were in the next stall. Or when you were having drinks at the local with your neighbor, and that drunk douchebag asked if you two just got "back from Brokeback Mountain."

Or maybe it hasn't been since the high school dance and, buzzed from your first beers, you wanted to punch the denim off the kid with the Ozzy Patch who bumped into you every day in the halls.

Whatever it was, you've thought about fighting; you've thought what you would do or you've wished what you could do should the opportunity ever present itself.

With the UFC and the emergence of MMA schools everywhere, it seems we've all gotten a little more mindful about the fight game.

I went to the ER recently for a staph infection and told the attending physician that I may have picked it up on a grappling mat. I was prepared to give an introduction to the basics of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, when he proceeded to tell me, as he made the incision and forced the drainage (Oww!) that he trained MMA, and we went into the 'ol "striking versus grappling" discussion.

That's the day we live in.

And with all this said, for all the TAPOUT shirts, and everyone picking up techniques from Youtube, that for all of this interest and devotion, do we know anymore about fighting?

II.

If you do care about this fight stuff,  you are in good company...

Well, you are also in very bad company; in fact, maybe the worst company there is. But that might be obvious, and as the speakers at professional development seminars remind us with goofy illustrations: accentuate the positive.

SO...

Writers, statesmen, artists, politicians have long engaged and been fans of the fight game, folks.

Hemingway, Mamet, Fitzgerald, Joyce Carol Oates, London, Aimee Mann, Mailer and on.

Those who immortalize writers and their spirit might suggest that it's their inherent contempt for the status quo.

But writers, like fighters, like the rest of us, are most concerned with their own status quo. And it is the love-hate relationship with status quo that unites them.

Before he was published, Raymond Carver railed at the publications that rejected him; for whoever listened, he derided the editorial staffs and the work they did choose to publish.

When a story of his was finally accepted, he took the actual magazine out with him for a night of drinking in Iowa City and then home where slept with it.

Similarly, the unranked fighter trains for his upcoming bout with the #37 man in his weight class with an indignation for being slighted and belief that those who come up with such rankings are fools who don't know nothin'.

He wins and breaks the top 40 world rankings and now prepares for his next opponent who, how dare he think he can compete,...because he's unranked.

The struggle fighters have, like the struggle writers experience, might be a bit more extreme than anything the average person does, but we are all at heart ridiculous yearners longing for more and better.

Thank God there are those who give voice and legend to our despair.

III.

There is something consummately democratic about the competitive fight: You are grouped by weight class, often by age or, and in the martial arts, by skill/belt level. The social fight, too, is democratic because the pauper can, and often does, outperform his rank and role in society.

That equality is something we like as Americans. It makes sense to us and when you see billionaires and celebrities ringside to watch a kid from a trailer park, it fulfills that American sense of justice and balance.

The duel with pistols had the same intention, to afford the offended a chance to stand up for their honor against a more able-bodied opponent; just because you were bigger and stronger, it didn't entitle you dishonor the smaller man.

But like rewarding for effort in the classroom proves to favor the teacher's bias even more so than a test, the duel system began to see offense only in that which offended the upper-class. You want to trash the man with no property or family? Have at it. As it would evolve in 18th century and on,  the duel system was regulated mainly to protect property owners and men of good name.

And as the duel came to favor the better pistol (that was also regulated), those who could afford finer, custom-made pistol were coming out standing as the lowly sank into the marsh.

And yes, some of the Founding Fathers and early men on import believed in the duel, there were some of rebellious spirit who despised it.

It is not totally accurate that President Andrew Jackson loved duels. The 'ol son-of-a-bitch, who upon entering the White House, brought along his kin and friends who damn near tore the place. Jackson, it seems, believed more in throwing down.

 I suppose Old Hickory, not a sentimental man, enjoyed dueling more than poetry or other soft sciences, but truth be told about the man who engaged in and won two duels: He'd much rather beat you with his fists.

In the latter of his two duels, Jackson's pistol misfired, and as was the rule, as if a faulty gun was a sign from above, he was to hold fire until his rival had his shot.

"Be damned!" Jackson exclaimed, firing again and killing the man.

Why should he be killed by a lesser man because a piece of machinery didn't work, he reasoned?  Shouldn't men settle matters with what God gave him alone?

As we moved away from the duel winner being chosen by "God's will", we began to look at those who toiled and built their muscles for the fight as better men.

Our love for fighting has since bloomed.

IV.

There are three different kinds of fights: There's the social/street fight. This has its origins as the after school fight at the tennis courts and later evolves into the bar fight that can occur well into your fifties.

Then, there's the competitive fight: boxing, mma, wrestling, judo, etc.

And, of course, and probably the least prevalent- meaning: of all the fights that exist, the competitive ones and the social ones make up the vast majority- and that is the survival fight.

Common questions about fighting are: Who wins a striker (boxer, muay thai) or a grappler (judo, wrestler, Brazilian jiu jitsu)? As it's well-known: Styles make fights. And those styles change as much within the discipline as between discipline...

Two of the most dominant middleweight college wrestlers of recent years were slick and funky, Darrion Caldwell of NC State, and a meat-and-potatoes hammer named Brent Metcalf of Iowa. When they met in the NCAA Finals, the clash of styles was so significant, it appeared as if they were in separate disciplines.

In an MMA fight, Caldwell and Metcalf would present entirely different problems for their opponents, and yet, there's the tendency to group them because they both happen to compete in the same sport.

The same could be said of Willie Pep (the evader) and Gene Fullmer (the bruiser) had they competed at the same weight class. Both hall-of-fame boxers, but night and day stylistically and temperamentally.

The question isn't what discipline wins, but who is practicing the discipline?

Yes, wrestlers, by and large, should win the takedown game. Boxers can end the fight almost imperceptibly. And in the scramble, the judoka or bjj guy can find a lockout or choke that puts the other guys to sleep.

And of temperament, wrestlers may share that "wrestler's intensity" or the BJJs might possess a characteristic calm, but approaches do vary, coaches have different philosophical leanings and the fighters also represent their region and personal make-up.

Who wins?

Only the most expert followers of the game know, and they are frequently wrong.

And this is in a controlled, officiated contest within a very strict system of rules and measures.

Can you imagine the possibilities in the no-rules brawl outside the local bar?

V.

In the "Pine Barrens" episode of "The Sopranos," Christopher and Paulie pay a visit to a drunken Russian mobster, Valery, who owes the crew money. After suffering Paulie's indignities, he finally snaps when they break his universal remote.

He charges them like an aimless bull; big, but paunchy and ridiculous in pajama bottoms and rumpled t-shirt. Like the pros they are, Christopher and Mr. Walnuts subdue the bull and crack his windpipe. Believing they've killed him, they roll him in carpeting, toss him in Paulie's trunk and head for the wooded area near the state's central shore.

When they open the trunk upon arrival, their Russian friend has bitten through duct tape and is spitting violent Russian epithets. To learn him a lesson, the boys march him into the snowy woods at gunpoint and indicate a spot to commence digging his own grave.

As he notices Paulie and Christopher clad in their leather jackets, hunching their shoulders against the cold, Valery, still in alcoholic evening ware, pounds his chest, exclaiming in Russian:
"You think this bothers me...I wash my balls in ice water!"

Okay. I take you at your word.

Without the privilege of subtitles, Mr. Gaultieri and Moltisanti aren't as on guard as they should be and Valery seizes the opportunity at a moment's flinch and whacks them with a shovel and makes a sprint for the woods.

They shoot and either connecting with flesh or a patch of berries (poisonous, by the way) send a burst of red into the air. Had they hit him? If so, wouldn't he die off somewhere deep in the bush? Or...is he out there, stalking? And what kind of machine can endure a gunshot?

Well, evidently: A former Soviet Special Forces officer who killed  sixteen Chechen rebels, which was Valery had been before his descent into booze.

Within hours, Christopher and Paulie are delirious from hunger and cold. Approaching an absurd and certain death in an abandoned van, we ask how did they sink to this when earlier that day they had made relatively quick work of Valery and he, quite possibly, now is holed up in a cave, making a fire from frozen bark and subsisting on flora only a special forces officer trained in Siberia could identify.

They had overpowered Valery in the dank Fair Lawn apartment and were now, should he find them, at his mercy. How?

Christopher and Paulie had left the terrain where they are best, and had entered Valery's wheelhouse.

Just as Valery can make a weapon from a tree branch, or find cover in the hollow of a log and live on berries and squirrel dung, Chris and Paulie own the layout of an apartment: fireplace stokers, Humanitas plaques, lamps, belts and sashes, shoes and every other object not-tied down is a perfectly viable weapon.

Where others might be reticent of second-story windows, they are not. Where others' instincts shut them off when a fight breaks out inside a home, they let loose. And where others are fearful of what they might do to the other person as they could get sued or arrested, Chris and Paulie know that they have ways around that.

Mobsters are free of responsibility to anyone but themselves and their bosses; they have little fear, as that  has been subsumed in their blood oath. 


But in the frozen Pine Barrens, there is no one to bribe or inveigle. It is just the elements, and Valery, while oafish in the social interaction, he has worked out a nice deal with them, and once out of firing distance, he was taken into a world in which he was protected.

Such is the case with the street fight, the social fight: it is decided by terrain. Mental and physical terrain.

I met a former Marine from Texas. About 25, rugged and with the look of someone who'd done his share of scrapping. He had been in Boston a few months and had seen a bar fight:

" One dude hit another dude out of nowhere..." He said, incredulously.
"Yeah," I told him, "That's a 'sucker punch'. It's how all fights in bars start."
"Not where I'm from."

He went on to tell me that where he's from, when two guys want to fight, they go outside, take off their jackets and have at it. You try to take off your jacket, I told him, somebody is going to clock you in Boston.

"But what's that prove, hitting somebody like that?" He asked.
"It proves you're going to keep your teeth." I tell him.

In the city, there are just too many people, too many possibilities to play around in a competition game with fighting.

And this does not mean that Boston bar fighter is the best fighter...that's just his terrain.

Perhaps in a town outside Lubbock, Texas, he would be out of his realm and this young Marine would whoop him.

I am just offering this simple advice: If you are about to fight, know your terrain and stay in that. If you are not on your terrain, do everything you can to control the environment.

VI.

It's 1953 and a mother drags her eleven year old son to a Louisville boys' club to learn to box. He had his  bike stolen and wouldn't defend himself.

Under the tutelage of several coaches, the boy overcomes his reluctance and wins six amateur state titles and then, the 1960 Olympic Gold Medal in Rome, and finally, numerous world titles.

Muhammad Ali.

Little Ray Walker is living in depression era Detroit in the rough "Black Bottom" neighborhood. Concerned over their diminutive nephew's well-being, his uncles begin teaching him how to box. And while he immediately displays dancer-like footwork, he holds back on his punches.

Eager to get in the fight game, Ray took the identity of an elder friend and became Sugar Ray Robinson, Ring Magazine's Pound-for-Pound Greatest Fighter of All-Time (Incidentally, he got over his misgivings with punching: 108 career knockouts).

Bas Rutten, another early legend of mixed martial arts, suffered so much teasing because of a skin condition as a teenager, he took up karate to fend them off.

George St. Pierre, currently regarded as the best pound-for-pound mixed martial artist in the world, took up fighting as a way to combat the bullying he suffered at school.

And on and on...

Let's go back to the high school fight...

Kids load up cars and drive to a vacant lot on the other side of town. The two rivals get out and a circle forms around them. The first punches are thrown and the crowd, eager for blood and action, moves with the fighters, sometimes pushing them back into the action.

What brought them to the lot? A girl? An almost-fight in gym class? "Talking shit"? Whatever it was, it will soon be only a footnote to the ass-beating that is about to take place.

What is that the above world champions displayed from a young age that is lacking in the after-school brawlers?

Fear. Reticence. A dislike, even, for confrontation.

The teenager takes a swig of Jack Daniels from a bottle that the stuffed Chevy Nova he's riding in is sharing. He steps out of the car, gripping his fists and snarling to convince us that he's not afraid.

No need to convince us. I'm sure he's not.  But he should be. Anyone should be. Fear in this situation is a very good thing; it's part of the natural system. That fear is what fueled the fight in Ali and Robinson.

And he's going to put himself in a situation where he will invariably get hurt over something he now, walking to that circle, probably can't remember. (Believe me, ten seconds in, your unshakeable disdain vanishes and concern for surviving sets it).

"He's an asshole!" The kid insists. Okay. Then, let him go and be an asshole. Or, as Chazz Palminteri in "A Bronx Tale" tells C about the boy he wants to beat up because he owes twenty bucks "For twenty bucks you got him out of your life."

Sure, you get to hit the asshole. But he gets to hit you, too. And here, this may be very difficult to face: there are people out there with beliefs, tastes in music, friends, jobs, personal lives, ideologies, etc, that you would find despicable who can kick your ass.

Sorry, but it's true.

Fighting them is probably the worst way to combat what you don't like in them; if anything, when you do fight, a Stockholm Syndrome sort of thing occurs and you may even develop respect for them and acceptance of the lifestyle you find so despicable.

The seed of Robinson's fight interest was the evasion of being hit. By getting in that car and going to fight that kid, you are giving up the best opportunity there is to not being hit. Talent understands opportunity: dime yourself out to the cops, fake an injury, swear at a teacher and be kept after school, just don't get in the car.

If you can't appreciate on the macro how dumb it is to get in that moveable ring, then I'm convinced you will not understand the subtleties of slipping punches.

Bobbing and weaving is great, but finding a way to bow out of fight that you might be over (or under) matched for, that takes in no consideration for your physical condition (Man, you coulda just gotten over the flu), that's the stuff of champions.

"But he spilled a beer on me?!"

Sorry. But go into competitive fighting and after a few months when you understand what punching is about,  see if this potentially dangerous endeavor doesn't seem ridiculous.

Don't you want to win? Sure, you do! But what constitutes a win? Bloody nose? What if the other guy doesn't care? He goes down first? What if that's his style? Everyone there said you won? What if they don't (and they probably don't) know what the hell they're talking about?

Guys who get their asses kicked frequently don't accept that they got their ass kicked.

If you're looking for unanimous support, look elsewhere.

And then, go to law school. You win.

VII.

In 2007,  Massachusetts man,  Kevin McDonough was awakened in the early morning by a strange noise coming from his daughter's room. Waking his wife, Jeannie, they went next door, flipped the lights and looked in.

On their daughter's bed was a man holding a large hunting knife.

McDonough rushed the man, nine inches taller and almost a hundred pounds heavier, and got on top of the man's back in a choke hold. His wife held the man's knife hand as she called the police.

The man, they would find out, was Adam Leroy Lane, a trucker and serial killer who was soon connected to two murders and several attacks.

No betting man would take McDonough over Lane in a bar fight. Maybe not even in a competitive match.

Aside from Lane's significant size advantage, he was studied in attacks. McDonough, a relatively active fifty year old man, who works in construction, he had never been in a fight in his life.

"Just playing around stuff. Nothing real." McDonough said.

Joe Maffei, an early mixed martial arts competitor and coach and currently an expert in survival, he trains police department and various military outfits in elements of surviving attacks, wasn't totally surprised by the outcome.

"All things being equal," Maffei said of McDonough's situation, "I'd rather a guy who'd never been in a fight than some street brawler."

Why? Because street fighters, he said, make mistakes of ego: "They let their ego get in the way..."

As part of most dojo rules, martial artists are not allowed to use their skills "out in the street."

Not only is part of their sense of moral decency, but it's about karma.

As they say "How can you be prepared to defend your family if you would harm others' family?"

Tony Soprano begins having panic attacks when he sees a family of ducks walk around his pool. Dr. Melfi suggests that it is fear of taking care of them that has caused the anxiety.

"Mommy!" Cries mob wannabe, Matt Bevilaqua, as Tony and others fire shots into him.

Tony has anxiety of what can happen to his children because he knows the harm he has done to other people's children.

Maffei's studies, the case of Kevin McDonough, show that engaging in the social fight doesn't prepare you for that attack.

"It's amazing how well people with basic knowledge and respect can protect themselves." Maffei says. "And the best fighters I know, they walk away from trouble."

Brendan Behan wrote "The laughing boys are handiest in the skit," and reasoned, "It's not in a man's nature with sense of humor to be tricking with guns..." and if he is there must be something "wrong" with him. And you don't want to mess.

VIII.

The popularity of mma, which incorporates all the bare-handed possibilities of the fighting arts, has changed the public's concept of fighting.

As a wrestler, I am so pleased that it has awakened the masses to my discipline and brought it so much respect.

Still, I don't believe that it is the ultimate deciding ground for who's the best fighter: It tells us who is the best competitor at the regulated sport that takes place in an octagon, cage or ring.

What fighting means to people engaged in endeavors we don't know about (special forces military, perhaps?), might encompass beyond what goes on in mma.

Fighting is a science that can never be totally encapsulated.

Fighting evolves and yet, we go back and find the old stuff works, and there was technique we missed.

But still, on basic cable we see shows that perpetuate silly concepts of fighting, looking for the "Who wins?" answer:

"Who would win: Alexander the Great or Attila the Hun?"

They are really trying to figure out who would win between two opponents who lived 800 yrs apart with absolutely no gauge of their physical make-up, athleticism, martial arts training?

Who knows if Attila ever even put his fists up?

It is only slightly less absurd than the debate of who wins: Mighty Mouse or Underdog?

A title bout between contemporaries can have Judges ringside who can't come to a unanimous decision, but we're to figure out the winner between the two ancient conquerors?

Or the shows will travel to exotic places to learn the local martial art. "We're in Tel Aviv with Israeli Special Forces to learn Krav Maga..."

Why not go to the Krav Maga of America Headquarters in West L.A.? It's probably about ten minutes from your production studio and I imagine it's pretty good KM?

Sure, it might not be as sexy, but you can find interesting fighting going on everywhere...

Like in Rahway, New Jersey where the wrestling club hold meet nights where ex-wrestlers, who include prison guards and NFL players, go at it.

Fighting is everywhere. Every culture and subculture fights or has come to terms with it.

Fighting changes, not only discipline from discipline, but from exit to exit on the highway; rich to poor, ethnic group to ethnic, and every possible lifestyle.

That should be a show.

Rather than  having the host be some Dude in a  silk shirt talking the talk, why not have a normal guy with a little knowledge take us to the Native American Reservation, the prisons, the cities, the mill towns, the ghetto surf culture, gangs, immigrants and on.

Just as Man vs. Food shows us the joy of food in the unexpected and the small, the fight show could expose us to how people view fighting everywhere...

World Champs to Street brawlers to survivors. I'd call it "Fighting Stance."

That would be some show.

I hope somebody does that...

Oh yeah, they did...

I have twenty-seven hours of footage that examines fighting from this exact perspective.

If you got any friends in production, tell them. Let's see if we can make this happen.

Until then: Put your money on Mighty Mouse.

Forgive Us Our Crap

" Dusty, You'd Think They'd Remember 'Bonnie and Clyde'?"

TIM

Tim Robbins has released an album with his "Tom Robbins and The Rogues Gallery Band."

It is by all accounts a bad album. That is, the part that Tim Robbins plays is, according to the AP's Chris Willman, "an occasionally torturing role."

Hold on, not so fast. You'd think that likening what was intended for listening pleasure to mock execution and gaslighting would mean the end for the outfit's self-titled debut album.

You might be wrong...because, as Blanche Dubois noted on one of her few good days: "Sometimes, there's God so quickly..."


Yes, that. And, The Rogue Gallery's inept lead singer happens to be one of the most endeared actors of his generation.

That helps. And there you can see the daylight breaking in...

"His voice," writes Willman, "is not something a plurality of listeners will find lovely to behold."

What? Again: What? I think his saying that Robbins' voice is not lovely, in a review of someone he  obviously respects, can only be a euphemism for "dog-shit bad."

And a "plurality" wouldn't like it? How about one? Anyone? Willman can really only speak with certainty for himself, and considering his flowery speculating that people wouldn't find it lovely, but painful, wouldn't it be more accurate to say, as he probably would for the local punk band's "Live from The Knights of Columbus" release: It's awful.

This ostensibly bad review is a "Well, alright, Tim..." and a dropping of the velvet robe; we can fit one more in.

You have really succeeded, not when your work resonates with your audience (blah, blah, blah), but when they forgive your failures...

You're the coin, with alternating sides of success and failure that can hurt you not at all.

3RD STREET

An American Idol contestant is up and surprisingly (I'm not yet saying "good" or "bad," we don't know...) wails away on a line Otis Redding had originally handled so delicately.

Cut to Simon: Is he mad? Is he disgusted? Offended? Or, is he wowed?

Most prominently, Cowell voices protests when his time is wasted.

"Is this going to be a long story?" Is the prevailing sentiment and posture of auditioning panels, and Cowell has famously given an acidic voice to it, which (who knew?), is evidently the guilty fantasy of the viewing public.

What has done this to us? Has it been "ideas meetings," weekly conferences, re-certification lectures, seminars and symposiums 'til we want to puke? All the build up to...nothing.

What's the answer? "Just knock 'em dead!"

Have you ever been "knocked dead?"

The Bruce Springsteen concert the last time it came around?

No, absolutely not. In fact, the very reason you enjoyed Bruce so much was that it didn't knock you out and there was no expectation that it would. There was a reliability of quality, yes, and maybe even some oddity ("I'm gonna do a number you might not have heard before that Woody Guthrie used to do..."), but also a reliability that there would be the usual numbers, not sounding much like the mastered albums, and a couple of cart-wheels and flag-holds on his mic stand without much threat to maintain normal breathing.

Has anyone ever started a joke, "I heard this joke...it's really funny...so, there's this guy and..."? Did it make you nervous? It makes me nervous because its expressed purpose is to be funny; there's no other way to go, it can't be ironic or weird or interesting.

It's a lot to ask of yourself and your audience that either of you will elicit an exact reaction or performance.

David Letterman was so easy to tune into because his failed jokes and his "cover" to them was every bit as enjoyable as his gems; the joke falls and no one laughs. "Goodnight, everyone!" he'd say and mock walk off the stage. The general experience was so easy to endure.

There was a music reviewer for a local Boston paper who I used to see at shows all the time. With no physical description, you could easily spot him: he was the most nervous guy in the house;  gulping beers and gnawing on his pencil, worrying that his observations wouldn't match the band's faithful.

The faithful, on the other hand, knew it was going to be a good show...

"You suck!" they'd joke between the band's songs.

Ah, there it is...letting the audience off.

It's said that when performing stand-up for the first time at The Apollo, that your intro should be brief and not too flattering, as the usual response from the audience when a hyped talent disappoints is "Maybe you should've stayed in Kansas City, Superstar!"

As the girl with whom I shared a loss of virginity could tell you: there is nothing more unforgivable than being let down after a lot of hype.

As for being knocked dead...

There was a group of acrobats who performed at the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica. For several very intense minutes they scared the shit out of everyone who walked past them. Flips, fire-breathing, handstands upon handstands, and finally a tower-standing upon each other's shoulders thirty feet or so in the air, and the man at the bottom supported them all on his stomach as he bent backwards -- no hands -- in the most impossibly low limbo stance of all time. With a hip pop, he sent each descending member into a somersault and then to their feet.

They passed the hat and, notwithstanding the nervous claps, our mood was not unlike the tellers' in movies when the bank robbers have made off after having kept them at gunpoint.

Knocked dead.

Impressed? Yes. Anxious to see them in future engagements? Maybe not.

Ask a 1941 Yankees fan how he felt following Dimaggio's hitting streak. Or those about the summer that they waited for Lance Armstrong to win the Tour again? Or the undefeated team who runs through the playoffs and wins the championship? How do they feel?

"Thank God that's over" they say. We are proud to get through trials, but we tend not to want to go through every week.

The perfectly lean cut of filet mignon may be a sight to behold, but it's the T-bone, speckled with fat and circle of mangled marrow, that brings out the hmmm.

The performer who has had the good fortune of both disappointing and giving us what we want will likely be able to pawn anything off on us.

One of the most delightful boxers of the last twenty years was Vinnie Pazienza. Before a title fight, when the cameras got their last glimpse of the fighters before they hit the ring, Paz would tell the pay-per-view audience not to worry: "relax and have a good time...this is what I do." The smile across his broken face a testament that shit happens.

The Arist I-Think-Presently-Referred-To-As-Prince, had a hit back in the '80's with "Rasberry Beret." He begins the song with a cough before the music rises.

With the flaw out of the way, it was easier to hum to the chorus.

AM-A

And of course, the rules change from medium to medium...

Music, by and large, is not taken very seriously when done by non-pros (I think, we defer to our ears over diplomacy). Sure,  Keanu Reeves' Dogstar can come to your town and fill the best theater but...well...you know.

TV seems to be a pretty good place to for those dependent upon the goodwill of the audience.

In what was supposed to be a scathing review of her new show "Parks and Recreation," The New Yorker's Nancy Franklin first asked, "Is there anyone more appealing on TV than Amy Poehler?" Then gushed, rather generally about her spunk and "warmth" and "radiance" before even getting to, in the article's last paragraph, the business of the show.

Her admiration of Poehler, or the nature of it, much like Willman's soft-touch to Robbins' current effort, is grounded in her relationship with Poehler's spirit. Willman provides himself something of an escape hatch of flat-out telling Robbins to stick with acting by referencing his adequate musical performance in 1992's "Bob Roberts" (which, I seem to recall, was supposed to be deliberately hokey and unpleasant). Similarly, Franklin says that Poehler's imitations on SNL "weren't necessarily terrific, either, or dead on."

Then, what was so appealing or warm?

You would think, to answer her own question, as the magazine's TV critic, she'd find a performer who did do "dead on" and "terrific" impressions more appealing.

Or someone on a good show, which she felt "P&R" was not...

After her ass smooch...

"Which brings me rather uncomfortably to her present show..."Parks and Recreation."

Is she apologizing for the bad review? "Uncomfortably?" Who is Franklin working for, the readers or Poehler's publicist? Why would she be uncomfortable saying crap is crap?

Poehler as it turns out is a TV star and one perfectly suited to steer such a vehicle. "P&R" survived awful first season reviews and ratings and has come out the other side.

 Poehler's "appeal" with both the skimp viewers and the NBC execs staved off cancellation long enough for the creators to revamp "P&R," shifting focus of the series to a strong supporting cast and cameos. The critics and Nielsen have approved.

It was said that Henry Winkler couldn't lead another show because the audience couldn't think of him as anything but the Fonz. Personally, I had no trouble believing Winkler couldn't start jukeboxes with a snap of his fingers....

I think the continued climb of a TV series, with the hills being the knockout episodes and the valleys being the ill-conceived mistakes that come with filming 22 shows per season, we can't bear to go through those rough patches again with someone who took us to top as "Happy Days" was.

When I was a police officer, there were cops who regularly performed the task of "informing next of kin;" they possessed something that made the ugly and tragic, if not more bearable, a part of life we have to go through.

Poehler, who was a front piece as SNL cast member for nine years, a show where (admittedly) every other skit doesn't work, had an extraordinary record of disappointing and being granted forgiveness.

VIOLIN MUSIC

I know, I know: Your heart bleeds for me and every other unsuccessful writer/actor.

"That's the business, dude..."

Indeed, and it surely has colored by perspective. But long before I threw my hat into the ring, I was a viewer, and I appreciated what I thought was good so much that I hoped that I could do it myself for some other people.

It is a business where the auditioning soprano is cut short before she even finishes her 16 bars -- "Next!!!" Or writing partners scratch their heads to figure out the best way to FADE IN from black (really, there's only one...the lights come on!) because, as they're told continually: "You've got to hook the reader fast!"

Or as a friend was told when he performed a monologue so dear to the director's heart, "Who are you to do 'The Shadowbox'?"

All this, and then front page billing and kid-glove handling such as the review I once heard of Rosie O'Donnell's turn as Rizzo in "Grease:" "She can't sing or dance, but what heart!"

Do they have a class in heart at Juliard?

I'm all for giving the Charlie Hustle Award, but does it have to be to millionaires while there are starving types with chops galore busting their ass admirably in community theater?

And yet, I believe that there is the intangible...that association with the actor...

Tim Robbins and The Rogues Gallery Band have benefitted from the star power of winning the Oscar, yes, but also from the silly turns in "The Sure Thing" and "Howard, The Duck."

Maybe our smug dismissal of "one hit wonders" is an instinctive resentment towards the pretty boys who  dance around and win the title without a scratch: we want to see the swollen eyes of a flop, the bloody lip of a broken marriage; we want to know you paid your dues.

The answer is not to knock them dead, but to keep cranking it out. Volume is rewarded, I guess.

That seems a good idea.

After all, the readers of this blog stood by me after that piece of crap post about "adages" a while back with only a slight drop in hits to the site.

Yes, I have arrived.

TAKEN BACK: The Transition From Wrestling To BJJ

Warning: If that takedown felt too easy, it was.

I.

When I was sixteen, after a night of "Quarters" with some friends in the beach town where I spent my school vacations, I found myself near the dunes with a pretty girl I'd been pining for all summer. After bearing with my fumbling for a half hour or so, she took control of the situation and pushed me to my back, smiling as she closed in.

"I, uh, can't do this..." I said.
"It's okay," she insisted, thinking that I was politely deferring to her honor.
"It's not that," I couldn't spell honor at that moment, "I just can never be on my back...I'm a wrestler."

True story. Sad story. A story that might raise suspicions in suspicious minds.

Besides the fact that this kinda thing didn't come my way often (and certainly the opportunity with this girl never presented itself again), I was not a top recruit for the University of Iowa or anything.

What the hell was I doing to my life?

I was comforted to learn that while he was at Penn State, future NFL running back Matt Suhey couldn't perform the bench press properly as he, also a wrestler, wouldn't keep his shoulders pressed to the bench.

"I don't sleep on my back. I don't make love on my back. I don't do anything on my back..." His teammate recalled Suhey saying.

And Suhey (to my knowledge) didn't wrestle much beyond high school.

Avoiding your back is one of the first things you learn, and becoming invulnerable or, at least, less vulnerable, requires an almost religious devotion as:

Your job is to put other people to their back...you work towards that every moment you're on the mat!


Putting someone on their back who wants desperately not to be there, and avoiding going to your back as someone who drills techniques that enable him to do so, tries desperately to put you on yours.

Simply: that's wrestling...


Continue reading at BJJWeekly.com at:
http://www.bjjweekly.com/bjj-lifestyle/taken-back-the-transition-from-wrestling-to-bjj.html

The Eugene Roche Approach

Live Like A Character Actor

BRANDO

I have known several dogs named "Brando."

A majestic malamute owned by a stormy, creative couple. A regal German Sheperd who rode shotgun in a friend's Lincoln. And the running mate of a college wrestler in-training.

No Anthony Quinns, but three Brandos? (though, on a side note: I did meet a great dane named "Robert Mitchum" walking the streets of Watertown, Mass. No lie).

And I come to this...

Marlon Brando would've made a terrible pet dog. Sure he would've come flying out of the gates, redefining the standby leaping through blazing hoops and luring girls at the dog park. But I imagine by his fifth birthday ( or 35th, as it were) he'd have found the whole dog-thing pretty boring, and would have sought contentment on a pillow or some remote part of the house, matted and snarly to the touch.

Maybe he could eke out a "Last Tango in Paris" moment of passion when a neighbor's cat stirs him, but his movements would be decidedly his, and for a dog or an actor and maybe even a man, such a temperament is a drag for everyone.

It seems that if you stumble upon a fitting best friend, one willing to sleep alongside you when others won't, who will fight the good fight when your honor is encroached upon and, maybe with limping gait but without surrender, will retrieve the tennis ball from the mucky pond, you might want to name him: Paul Dooley or Edie McClurg or Leo Gordon or Emmet Walsh or Gloria Grahame or J.T. Walsh, or of course, Eugene Roche.

Dogs likened after character actors would never disappoint.

THE ROLE

Very simply, characters actors are never main-billing in the film; character actors are not known for being presented with a vehicle for them.

Again simply, they are subordinate to the piece but their role and how they play it brings authenticity to a character whose function is to move the story along; they play that role in a way that does not distract from the story. The story is bigger than them.

Not two-dimensional. Not cartoonish.

They are what every actor should be, and they do what every actor should works towards.

This is why improvy-types who are meant to steal the scene ( I'm thinking at this moment of the guy who gives up his car in the store parking lot in "Superbad") are not character actors: these types function more as, say, a keyboardist in a rock band called out of the shadows and introduced by the lead singer (in their case, the screenwriter or Director) for their power solo while the song meanders.

They are referred to as "that guy" by hipsters during drinking games and late-night TV sketches. But without that guy or gal, the scene doesn't work, and "that guy" is a mighty big compliment of a job well-done:

-That woman who asks Elisabeth Shue and Nicholas Cage to leave the desert motel with a twangy smile in "Leaving Las Vegas".


-That guy who insults Joe Pesci by asking him to shine his shoes in "Goodfellas."


- That woman in "Picnic" who drunkenly embarrasses herself by making advances towards William Holden and then exposes him so he has to leave town.


Without them, the scene acts as an interlude player tap-dancing their way across the stage with a card reading "End of Act I", or at home, a commercial...

-Why is Olympia Dukakis, though she fills the screen nicely and has a kinda funny New York accent,  talking to Melanie Griffith like she's a headhunter for an employment agency?


-I think it's great that Ben Affleck got a personal trainer and can do chin-ups, but I'd really like to get back to that story about bank robbers...?


And when they reappear, they masterfully apply their stamp to the performance while maintaining its integrity; like Coltrane's "My Favorite Things": it is both characteristic JC and unmistakably Oscar Hammerstein.

And yet, like a jazz musician, they don't play it the same way twice...

The aforementioned Paul Dooley in both "Breaking Away" and "Sixteen Candles" plays a working- class, no-nonsense father who loves his kids who happen to be in emotional flux. And yet, the characters are so distinctly different in ways I can't quite put my finger on that I needed to double-check IMDB to make sure it was the same guy before I wrote this.

The hey-day of early TV and Film owes so much to character actors who showed up on the Paramount Lot and convinced us that they were camped along the Ponderosa or new in Carson City (and up to no good).

And the few brave and artful who have carried their legacy forward have been quietly rewarding audiences for decades.


PTA

Paul Thomas Anderson's brief stay at NYU ended when an paper he handed in for Freshman Screenwriting was returned and he got a C.


Convinced that a program that would give such a paper such a grade was not a place that would get him where he wanted to be, he left soon thereafter.

The assignment had been to write a scene of action. No dialogue (no doubt, a herd of hissing Tarantinos made their break for Mercer St.).  It should tell the audience who the character was in a page or two.

PTA's scene was of a man driving home late at night, fighting to stay awake. From an overflowing dashboard ashtray he pulled a half-smoked butt. He lit it and held it between his fingers as he dozily drove. When the cigarette burned down, it would sting him awake just as the car was veering off the road. He lit another and continued the process until he got home.

End of scene.

That's a C? Anderson creatively conveyed a character who was inventive, more than a little reckless, hard-working, steadfast, etc. And that character, Anderson told us, was Jimmy Hoffa, and all we know of Hoffa's story indicates exactly such a character.

More, the scene had been written by Pulitzer Prize Winner, David Mamet. While it didn't make it to the film starring Jack Nicholson, PTA loved it so much that when pressed for time, he pulled it from the treasure trove of scripts you'd imagine the young Paul Anderson would have and handed it as his own.

Forgive me as I swat at the low-hanging fruit...

This fekokteh instructor:

Had he or she going into the course been handed the pages Anderson submitted and told it was the work of Mamet, I would bet dollars to donuts that they would hold it up as a piece to be emulated, admired and something that all writers should works toward.

But when presented with it a student attaining what the assignment's ostensible goal is they are threatened and indignant.

Sure, PTA lifted the work. What's it matter? Had he written such a scene as he would in the next year with his short films, would he have done better?

Maybe you think that the instructor was looking for steps ("It's all about the process..." yawn...)? Or maybe you think that it's PTA's grabbing the work of an established writer that should be in question.

What? Does PTA think he's better than his classmates and can't go through the same program?


The education of screenwriters and actors is a very different one from, say, lawyers: law school encourages each student to be competent and confident of their skills in dealing with anyone. Reasoning, critical thought should be what you all aspire to...

Not the few, the blessed, the great.

Screenwriters and actors are not taught to be journeymen, at least they seem to be reminded of the immaculate creations of the legends...

"The moment he took the stage, you knew there was magic..."

In J.T. Clark's "Bare Bones Book of Screenwriting," the author reminds the fledgling writer of who he or she is not. Sure the writer decided they wanted to be writer after seeing such and such a movie- "I want to make films like that...", but Clark is convinced that killing that spirit is the way to go.

Regarding non-linear storytelling that the reader might've picked up watching "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels," he tells the aspiring screenwriter to dump those dreams "Unless your name is Guy Ritchie."

Sure, the good ones broke the rules...but you're not them, he says.

(Truth be told, as far as its instruction on format, the book is very good. In all fairness).

In the film class, the students carry the belief that going the steps will lead them to a role in the business. Paul Thomas Anderson was lucky enough by-pass because he's "talented."

Anderson claims that having grown up around the business allowed him to see what was possible; to pull down the curtain and see who was really at the controls...and that it was a more human endeavor than people would have you believe.

In a way, Anderson's using Mamet's scene was, as well as a vote of confidence that he could write such a scene, a plug for young people making films; the willingness to take the class, to pursue the career, put them all in company of Mamet.

Mamet himself writes of the "ideal democracy" created by a company actors and writers or the film set.

PTA's leaving NYU was an act of standing up against the pressure to follow the hierarchal route prevalent in entertainment: The legends, the middle-types (e.g., what such classes encourage) and those who are neither.

To further arm himself, the visionary director peopled his casts with a sea of the most loyal and uncompromisingly creative: Character actors.


BAKER STREET

Does Raphael Ravenscroft ring a bell?

If the name doesn't, then his saxophone riff from Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street" most certainly does, and it's the best thing you've ever heard.

Admit it.

Whether it was over the PA during skating classes at the YMCA ice rink, or while you drove in your father's station wagon (for an odd moment, you both impulsively whistled to the same song), that solo has memorialized something in that head of yours.

And never do you lose track of the song's intent or the words (sad and ironic) that Raffertey almost hums out, they are framed by the sax riff:

                               "He's got this dream about buying some land
                                 Gonna give up the booze and the one night stands..."

Ravenscroft is essentially a character actor. Sure, you might be able to recognize his licks from UB40 or Pink Floyd, but he never danced in a video for a lesser (but wildly selling) song with a cartoon cat in a zoot suit or found his way to Jay Leno's bandstand.

And for the Rafferty session he was paid less that $50 (U.S.) by a check that bounced.

But you decide...

-I wrote the screenplay for the Cameron Diaz/Ashton Kutcher movie that you hated


-I was on that sitcom on ABC about the roommates


or


-Me? Oh yeah, well, I played sax on a song by Gerry Rafferty called "Baker Street".


Your call.

MY MAN

Had you ever bumped into Eugene Roche, you might have pointed and said: "Hey, the Ajax man!"

Roche probably would've said "Thanks...put my nine kids through college."

But to the TV director assigned to the episode where pathos interrupts the normal comic fare, he was a savior:

On the All in the Family episode entitled "The Draft Dodger", Roche plays Archie's equally salty pal, Pinky Peterson who's been invited over for Christmas dinner. Peterson's son has recently been killed in Vietnam.

Unbeknownst to Archie, stepson Mike has also invited a friend of his...who turns out to be a draft dodger.

After heated moments and discussions in the kitchen, Archie confronts the young man in front of Pinky, booting him from the dinner.

Pinky steps in and tells the young man that he would be honored to have dinner with him, and that he's sure his son would have wanted to sit with the man, also.

I'm tempted to say something like "Only a man with nine kids would be have the depth to convey that loss..."

But it's more than that: the average actor, it seems, is so encouraged to convince us that they are without blemish (or every blemish is deliberate; "part of getting into character") that when they do emote such feeling, one can't help but be a little distrusting.

 As David Mamet puts it in "True and False", there is no character, "only you": the person you are on and off the stage, and your craft allows you to present that honestly responding the author's words.

In George Roy Hill's "Slaughter House Five",  Roche's Edgar Derby is killed for "stealing" a clock while waiting release in Dresden. The hangdog Roche being led away with memento in hand, as it had been in Vonnegut's novel, is the centerpiece of war's absurdity.

And while many gush when Deniro has the courage to parody himself in "Analyze This" or "Meet the Parents"- the aging actor accepts his waning bite- Roche's comic turns as fumbling hard-boiled Private Eye, Luther Gillis, on Magnum P.I. presents a far richer comic possibility than the old-man-who-once-was great: The old guy who was always ridiculous.

Some say that they liked actors who "look like they'd be good to have a beer with."

Yes.

Or those who look like they can't wait to get through check-out, eating the bag of chips as they roll the aisles of the grocery store.

Who knows if Roche did either, but he embodied something that demanded such humanity be kept alive, even as the business seeks to make it extinct.

Whitey Bulger is Like, Basically My Uncle

Saddest Part: He really needed to update his headshot

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'

As it turned out, FBI Most Wanted, South Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger packed up his game and headed out west.

Man, we should have checked there first! Such has been the route of romantic dreamers for almost a hundred years!

Unhappy childhoods, broken engagements and yes, even murder charges have long sent the tired and poor (by poor, I mean: without taxable income) Pacific-bound to reinvent themselves.

Much like Chris McCandless of "Into the Wild" who battled his discontent with the material world by following the setting sun and settling in an abandoned, threadbare public bus in Alaska, alone except for some books, pens, and curious wildlife, Whitey took residence in a northside Santa Monica apartment. If not for the toney zip code, cache of weapons, hundreds of thousands of dollars in US currency, and a female companion whose love of Whitey was second only to her penchant for plastic surgery,  Krakauer could have been writing about Bulger.

In the same land where Bernie Schwartz became Tony Curtis and countless others became less ethnic or whatever else the viewing public might have found more palateable, Bulger adopted the alias of Charlie Gasko and thus, became less felonious.

Like the early Hollywood players who had that je ne sais quoi that sent them searching, Whitey Bulger found himself in Tinseltown for reasons that can momentarily elude us...

Oh yeah:

He butchered at least ninenteen people. "California, here I am come!"

EXISTENTIAL QUESTIONS

Okay, it's 1994 and Feds are closing in on you. You take leave of South Boston, and using several misdirections- look-alikes, fake paper and money trails, and false sighting reports- you lose them.

With enough money and false identification to set you up, you find an apartment in Santa Monica, where for all its opulence, there's almost as much shade-pulling, mind-your-own-business and don't-ask-any-questions as Southie.

You're 64, the age of retirement. You've got ammenities. Companionship.

Now what? Sit back and enjoy, right?

Problem for Whitey:

You are cooped up with a companion who by virtue of the fact they would be your companion, and you're a killer, doesn't make for a very fit companion.

For example, like the rest of us, you seek solace in TV, maybe turning to TV Land and the Donna Reed Show. Longing for the rewards of domestic bliss, you look over to find, in contrast to Reed's "Kids, supper is ready!" and kissing Dad on the cheek,  menthol-hauling Catherine Greig, burgeoning brown edges overtaking her dye job, who occasionally might begin a conversation with:

"Hey Whitey, remember when you chopped that guy's fuckin' head off?"

For Greig, too, hasn't she removed herself  from the sisterhood of  "Sex and the City"?  I mean, I can't see Mr. Threaten-to-blow-up-your-house-if-you-look-at-another-guy finding endearment during Supper-club banter.

More, I think they have both moved out of the realm of  "Okay, he's got a bad temper, but he's a sweetheart when you get to know him..." or "Deep down he's a good guy"; My God, he's not even eligible for "He's a complicated man".

Every sweet song or movie  can't ever apply to them. Can you imagine trying to buy a fitting Hallmark Card for the man who cohorts say felt better after torturing and killing his enemies (and by enemies,  I mean: once friends)?

It might also be difficult to take in the home of Healthy Living when much of your business was devoted to reversing the process.

Sure you could limit movie-viewing to the gangster genre...but just as it's too painful for the former quarterback to watch the game he can no longer play, I would imagine that for Bulger it would be so bitter-sweet to watch someone else crank a vise on someone's head until their eyes popped. And for Greig to watch another mob moll drag her finger nails down some "whore's" face for looking at her man, would be just too much.

SEMPER FI

Most difficult for Whitey must have been leaving his family whom he loved more than anything in this world...

I know because he was my uncle; at least, legally he was my uncle. When my actual uncle died in the 70's, he was one of several men randomly (and unbeknowst to them) selected to pass on their identification to Whitey. Bulger's friends at city hall had stolen the paper work of the newly deceased, leaving their next of kin wondering why their father or husband had accrued thousands of frequent flier miles nearly twenty years after their death.

I realize it's not the same, but still, whether he's a rotten human being, only waggishly connected by a misappropriation of files, you gotta stick by your people.

That's what Whitey taught me: You gotta stick by your own because the world is sick...and to reinforce that point, he killed nineteen people: "You see? I told you the world was bad!"

But if there's one thing you've got to admire about Bulger, it's his family loyalty.  "Always honor and protect your family..." he would say. And the way he best illustrated this was by harming others families and justifying it by suggesting they "friggin' deserved it."

Bulger comes from a culture that places articulating how much you love your family (preferably, violently) above actually doing it- shit, man, that requires honesty! You don't talk about the cousin's drug problem; Don't worry where Uncle JoJo got that new Cadillac; Your relative wasn't killed, he drowned- couldn't swim (especially with his head cut off). And God help the person outside the family who points out the dysfunction...especially if they're right!

I guess if Whitey was going to be out of contact with his family, the least he could do was take refuge in a place where denial is as cherished a family value as in South Boston.

When Charlie Sheen insisted he wasn't on drugs, Bulger was said to be so homesick that he was bed-ridden for days.

RHYMES WITH FAT, CAT, HAT AND SAT

How dare those-in-the-know call Whitey a rat. Okay, he did give up names to federal agents and police of people who did what he ordered. Yes, he did sell people out to save his own ass. And you bet he killed people for doing the same, calling them "rats."

But this is hypocritical, not being a rat. And no one said anything about that. In fact, it's clearly mentioned in the handbook that hypocrisy is perfectly acceptable.

And where does all this animus come from?  It's not like Whitey didn't suffer...

He faced personal attacks by federal agents using the media to lure him out of hiding. Headlines read:

- Bulger seen in gay bars
- Whitey has bad breath
-  Southie Mobster has dandruff
-  South Boston Thug Mangled Victims

Talk about cruel and unusual punishment? If he is gay and was out cruising, do you realize how tough it would be for him to live down the bad breath and dandruff thing? (Even with the hunky photo of him in the leather vest).



DEPART

Maybe he's heartless and maybe he doesn't deserve to ever see the light of day...

But at least he's not petty.

At arraignment, when asked if he knew the charges agaisnt him, he replied in unwavering Southie-speak: "Yeah, well, like, basically..."

No lawyers obfuscating things or itemizing the charges.

Yeah, basically...re: I hear you, man...let's cut to chase over here...

When the judge sentences him, I hope he takes this into consideration. As well as his being a good sport when fictionally  depicted by Peter Boyle (" The Friends of Eddie Coyle") and Jack Nicholson (" The Departed").

The poor guy wasn't even invited to the premiere. He probably drove up Wilshire to Westwood Village and crouched down as Greig drove the car past Fox Theatre as the red carpet filled with stars.

They returned to their humble apartment in the Princess Eugenia complex, watching re-runs and having to wait for the movie to come out on DVD like every other schmuck.

What's Missing From The Inspirational Graduation Speech?

                         Hint: It begins with an "I"

HONEST ABE

   Did you know that Abraham Lincoln failed a lot before he became president and got a chance to fight for what he believed in? Sure he did. And even if the guest speaker at the graduation I sat through yesterday hadn't told me, I was well-informed of Lincoln's travails, and furthermore, I would be surprised to hear that anyone who succeeded didn't struggle (truth be told: I'd be disappointed).

Before wishing them the best in whatever they pursue, she took a moment to look behind her at the gowned class and "imagined" the future "astronauts, presidents and scientists." (Imagine: the same moderately achieving middle school class produced more than one U.S. President? Man, Phillips Exeter can't boast the same!).

While yawning, stretching and trying to come alive, I thought it was time that I took a preemptive strike, here goes: These graduation speeches are really cynical.

For one, I know that she said they could do "anything" but really, she repeated the old standard occupations (notice, she didn't say "landscaper"?); we get it: wink, wink.

Several years back, incoming Harvard Freshmen were asked what they hoped to be after graduation.

Investment banker was the number one reply. Overwhelmingly so.

But interesting: most of those who declared that their future goal didn't know what it entailed.

"How could you want to do it if you don't know what it is?" Those conducting the inquest asked.
Simply: they knew it was successful.

The interviewers suggested that the replies indicated a disturbing trend: the most talented, educated and adaptable students were not open-minded to an education that may bring them to foreign ideas. This was bad for society, they said, but also for individuals who were swayed by the lofty rather than something they were passionate about. Though...

I'd say they were passionate, as were the stars of yesterday's graduating class encouraged to be: passionate about success.

What else is this but blind ambition? And more: it's a safe bet, not for a good life, but an approved life.

Haven't some of the most successful people and inventive minds found themselves at times lost? Haven't many successful people stumbled into unexpected and newly born opportunity while muddling through their hard-fought losses?

Why if it is bad for Harvard students, many of whom stand a great chance of fulfilling the dream, would it be good for inner-city middle schoolers? If the Harvard students' pursuit reveals, in actuality, a crushing of dreams, why would it mean anything good to those less enfranchised?

TEACH

Having sat through quite a few those commencement addresses, I am yet to hear listed as future profession "teacher." Nor have I seen posted on hallway walls any starry thoughts about becoming a teacher (police and fire fighters, yes, maybe long ago, but now that dies out around second grade).

The foremost problem in teaching being passed over for "higher achievement" is that it undermines the ability to influence them: "Who are you to tell me?", "What have you done?" or "Those who can't..." the students says.

Okay, before we talk of its other merits, simply: It's a good, solid job...

 Why on Earth wouldn't I suggest to a student that being a teacher, which has allowed me to provide well for my family, wouldn't be good enough for others, particularly those who come from homes that have traditionally struggled?

There is an elitist notion here borne out of academic do-goodery that encouraging the strugglers to become astronauts will cure their issues of poverty. Again, elitist, but, as well, shockingly naive: The average teacher at my school, with a Masters' degree, earns more than sixty thousand a year. Boston Police Officers frequently average in excess of one hundred thousand. Firefighters, etc...

Fair representation in well-paying service jobs is a given and a necessity for creating a socio-economically healthy communtiy.

When the average household in these communties barely teeters above the poverty line, how could you have any misgiving about doing what we can to encourage those fit for it to pursue a career that pays up to three or four times the national average?

The urban student finds himself in the same position as the chosen child of a poor family: in the family, the child is told to achieve beyond their parents, and in the school, the student to go beyond the teacher.

In both situations, it first creates a bratty child. In the long run, the child, set off on a blind run to outdo their parents and teachers, is set up for a disillusionment that Polly Eisendrath-Young refers to as "The Self-Esteem Trap."

In the book of the same name, Eisendrath-Young, a Jungian analyst, depicts many of her patients, though many are quite "successful," as marked by characteristic "restless dissatisfaction" and depression created by the  burden of "pressures to be exceptional."

The root cause, she feels, is that ours is a culture that tells every child that they are destined for greatness and genius.

While Eisendrath-Young clearly relishes reminding us that we are not great and should not purue greatness ( though, she feels quite comfortable, as the school's advisor, in telling Norwich University ROTC candidates that they are destined for military battle), she provides a valuable counter-view to "you can do anything" spiel fed to kids daily.

The chosen child focused only on "success" is not well equipped to cope with the natural ebb and flow, big and small undulating of living.

What the book should punch is: even if you achieve great things, there is a downtime. Not every moment of your life is great, and these "insignificant" moments are the core of your life and happiness.

It is possible for a teacher to play in a band, write, dance, compete in martial arts (as is done by my colleagues) where they can have their moments.

A life of both service and personal development? Man, I can see why the guest speakers would want to side-step that!

Teachers refusing to mention their own profession as a viable option, while undermining themselves and their colleagues, fails to provide a needed model of a daily worker. It reinforces what E-Y says has made us such an unhappy bunch- we are told that working a good job, providing a service at reasonable pay is nothing to shoot for.

The reigning mantra amongst teachers is "it's all about the kids." Wrong. It's interrelative. How could a teacher be impassioned in their instruction if they weren't tied to it, if it wasn't about them, too?

Yes, you are serving, but you're not serving time.

Being well-educated and skilled is what we're trying to encourage our students to be , how isn't the average teacher a fulfillment of what any school would hope for its student?

Perhaps it is the influence of teachers schooled at the elite institutions who saw their classmates go on to conquer the world of finance and inherited an inferiority complex (despite the "If I can affect the life of one child..." claims)? Or maybe it's those who view teaching solely (or most impressively) as an opportunity to be a savior, and again, like the over-burdening parent, live vicariously through the child?

In the children's book, the idyllic shot of Main Street and its neighborhood school presents a steady flow of activity- buses arriving with happy students, crossing guards waving kids along and teachers smiling as they teach kids in formation. Everybody happy that they have a job to do. That is the imagined vision of a functional community.

It is also true.

Encouraging students to approach life as a joy and success as gravy on top of the pride of living a good life is far less cynical than the subtextual suggestion that they failed if they didn't pursue a career whose title looks best on a business card.

When a guest speaker comes to our school- a pro athlete, a police detective, a private school admissions director- the children are all ears, as they hope their success will rub off on them.

Can you imagine how much more attentive students might be in a daily way if they were told being a teacher was something to shoot for? (Not to mention how much more respectful, polite and well-behaved?)


HENRY

After his re-election as Massachusetts Governor, Deval Patrick nominated Roderick Ireland as the state's Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court.

In interviews, Ireland waggishly recalled  his Junior High guidance counselor steering him towards the trades.

And...?

Within this inspiring story of an African-American's outstanding achievement is some rather pedestrian snobbery.

Are we all supposed to shrug knowingly at the suggestion of "the trades"? Need any of us be reminded of how well tradesmen do in Massachusetts? How much property they acquire? How many have gone on to run corporations, get degrees and influence public policy? That having a trade doesn't necessarily stop you from going to college or becoming a lawyer?

While there is no question that it is long overdue that African-Americans find their place in politics, law, the sciences, it is a betrayal to thumb our nose at the skilled trades and the self-suffiencey that they could bring to less-priveleged communities.

It's unfortunate that Ireland made example of the guidance...I am fearful that other guidance counselors will shy away from making that suggestion at the risk of being accused of crushing someone's dream.

Ireland didn't know that he wanted to be a lawyer. What is wrong with encouraging a student to arm themselves with a profitable skill while they "find themselves"?

Kissinger had worked at his family's cigar store as he toiled through night school.

Bukowski was a mailman. Faulkner a postmaster. Raymond Carver taught. And so has been the route of some of the most creative and productive minds.

I met the cousin of a very successful screenwriter who told me that the man was a "bum" before he sold his script. Turns out, the bum had traveled, taught English in several countries, learned a few languages, wrote a novel that didn't sell, etc.

Wow, what a slacker!

My speech is short: Never stop working towards your goals and, in the meanwhile, live intelligently.

David Mamet's to theater hopefuls was: "Speak up. Tell the truth. And think well of yourself while learning to do it better."

Yes. And it is a lot easier to think well of yourself AND work towards goals with a little change in your pocket.