RIP Zack & the tears we shed for the ones we love

 

(715 words)

Zack Starrett, 33, died having never seen “Cool Hand Luke.” I blame myself for the shortcoming.

It was a night a couple years ago. We were talking music, movies, etc. when I told him my all-time favorite movie is “Cool Hand Luke,” the 1967 Paul Newman movie about a laid back convict in a Dixie prison who refuses to bend to the tyrannical authority determined to break his indomitable spirit.

Spoiler alert! They can’t so they kill the sassy bastard.

Zack told me he’d never seen it.

I seized his arm and said, “What are you doing the rest of the night?” By the urgency in my voice, he could surmise what I had in mind.  I wanted him to toss the 20 remaining customers, grab a 12-pack and come back with me to watch “Cool Hand Luke.”

Like four straight times.

Sure, he’d lose his job and I’d get in big Dutch with the missus, but I thought it was essential that Zack see “Cool Hand Luke.”

I think it’s because I didn’t want my friend to change.

I wanted him to, like Luke, smirk at hardship, defy conventional thinking and mock the mindsets that say march on the days you’d really rather float.

And now he’s gone. He died early Thursday morning, a victim of a cascading spiral of ever-worsening Covid-related maladies.

Friends are trying to console me by telling me he’s “gone to a better place.”

Better place?

I contend there’s no better place than pre-Covid Flapper’s on a Friday when Zack was on one side of the bar and everyone of us who was on the other side couldn’t imagine being any where else.

There’s a happy babble of conversation — laughter, encouragement, flirtations, complaints, defeats and victories — the whole stew of humanity condensed into one warm tavern.

It was such reliable fun I was sure it wouldn’t last.

I remember warning Zack and some friends to not take it for granted.

“Good times can overnight go away,” I said, pointing out that the owner could sell, the old building could tumble over into the parking lot “or, gadzooks, Zack, could pursue career stability.”

I never dreamed his departure would be so morbidly final.

And as much I liked and admired the 33-year-old Zack, I was looking forward to spending time with Zack at 40. Or 50.

I was looking forward to seeing where his ambitions had taken him, how he dealt with the challenges of fatherhood and if he ever planned on giving up chasing full lunar eclipses all over the globe (I hoped not).

Nothing in my planning folly had him exiting our lives so soon and without a proper goodbye.

Yeah, 2020, you just keep on giving.

Or is it taking?

I often wonder about how old we’ll be in heaven. Do we assume the age we are when we die? Do children who die in tragic circumstances remain children or are they allowed to grow up, to enjoy the illicit thrill of sneaking that first beer and then make out in the back seat with the pretty neighbor girl who all of a sudden has become interesting for reasons he can’t explain. 

Will Zack still be Zack next time we see him?

I hope so because that Zack was close to perfect. He was charismatic without ever appearing over-bearing; just without being judgmental; and ready fun in any circumstance.

That’s the trade-off: Die young and unblemished and your golden memory will be revered for eternity.

His death reminds me how almost every tear we shed stems from selfishness. We cry not for the fate of others, but for how the fate of others affects our own.

We fall and skin our knee. It hurts. We cry.

Our hearts get broken. Our lives and routines are plunged into tumult. We cry.

A parent or spouse dies. Emotional and financial support is disrupted. We cry.

Shortly after learning that Zack had died, my daughters busted me in the kitchen sobbing like I imagine my Mom did when Dad told her they’d just shot Kennedy.

They thought I was weeping because Zack had died.

Someday I’ll explain the reason I wept was because we’ve been denied the opportunity to watch Zack live.

Related …

We Heart Zack! A love story about a man and his bartender

Jokin' 'bout the joys of jail

(693 words)

It would be a better story if I could honestly say I was there the night Capt. Tony told my buddies he didn’t respect any man who hadn’t spent at least one night in jail.

But that wouldn’t be the truth.

It was Spring Break back in 1985 and my buddies were in Key West while I was back home in Pittsburgh (no dough). And it would be an even better story if I could honestly say at that very moment I was in jail for doing something bone-headed like, say, being drunk and cutting the heads off of municipal parking meters. That’s how they snagged Lucas Jackson in “Cool Hand Luke,” my favorite character from my favorite movie. 

I wish I had been there and had heard the words straight from the mouth of Tony Tarracino, aka Capt. Tony, legendary owner of his namesake bar immortalized that very year by Jimmy Buffett in “Last Mango in Paris.” This was back before Buffett  became a conglomerate dabbling in restaurants, satellite radio, senior living.

Back when he still had what I guess you’d call beach cred.

The captain believed any man worth his salt had to at least once give The Man The Finger and spend at least a night in the slammer. It was a rite of passage.

It made sense to me and — boom — like that within the next year I was tossed into the Dormont Muncipal Jail for a crime I did commit (sorta).

Why I chose to follow the second-hand advice of a drunken old sea captain over the respectable multitudes urging me toward prudence and occupational responsibility is the story of my life.

But — aye, aye — the captain was correct. Doing at least one night in jail did bestow some worldliness. It gave me a great story (link below) and led to what was until recently one of my favorite bar conversation starters:

“Tell me about the night you spent in jail.”

You’ll be surprised by how many now-respectable men have had momentary bouts of lawlessness that led to a night in the Iron Bar Hotel.

The stories are often hilarious, even more so because the illegality is usually something they were once ashamed to admit.  What was once taboo has become humor.

The stories usually involve drugs, drunkeness and midnight mischief. I’m friends with a guy who stole a bulldozer and took it for a 6 mph joy ride down Main Street before realizing too late he was unskilled at knowing how to bring the machine to a complete halt. 

I know some guys who were busted breaking into a car impound lot to steal back their car and in their drunken confusion would up stealing the wrong car.

So I felt I was on stable ground Friday when I asked a buddy my light-hearted question: “Tell me about the night you spent in jail.”

“Which one? There were 528 of them.”

I’ll reveal no details that might lead any snoops to track down his identity except for this: His incarceration made national news and involved a cross-country ride in the caged back of a van driven by the man who would become famous as “Dog The Bounty Hunter,” and included two months with Unabomber Ted Kaczynski as his cell mate and that the terrorist was pretty cool.

It would be a better story if I could say my friend busted Ted for using his toothbrush, but that wouldn’t be true.

It was the most compelling (and entertaining) tale I’ve ever heard in response to my jocular question. And it was the last time I’ll ask it.

Our scars are the most interesting and revealing features of an aging man. But there are sound reasons why some men tend secrets.

Who am I to tap dance among the tombstones in search of bar giggles?

And I fear I, a mostly privileged aging white dude, might one day with buddy-buddy familiarity ask the wrong black man to regale me with some jaunty tales about his experiences with the law and he’ll want to kill me.

I’ll have it coming.

That’s the truth.

Related …

Me, Mandela & doin’ time

Life & Death of the prisoner with the big penis

Escaping “Escape from Dannamora” & the joys of bustin’ out

The prisons we construct around ourselves

Justice and John Grisham

What's my favorite movie? Hmmm . . .

(780 words)

My daughter, 13, asked me to name my favorite movie. I told her I could not because doing so would be like asking me to choose a favorite between her and her little sister.

Then I realized just how wrong that analogy was.

Actually, me trying to name my favorite movie would be like asking Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar to pick their favorite among Jedidiah, Josiah, Jinger, Jordan-Grace or any of the other 15 Duggar offspring whose names they likely can’t remember either.

It’s fun having a 13 year old in the house because now we can show her profanity-filled PG-13 movies without anyone thinking we’re bad parents.

Well, at least not any of the sleazy Hollywood liberals who serve on the Motion Picture Association of America ratings board.

We treat our favorite movies much the same as we treat our children.

We’re proud of them, we want to show them off to friends, and we believe we have a vested interest in them doing well because we think their success is a reflection of ourselves.

So from an early age we wanted Josie to appreciate movies like “Sneakers,” “Big Fish,” and “Catch Me If You Can,” right along side enduring classics like “Gone With The Wind,” and “Singin’ in the Rain,” and even “Rocky.”

What’s my favorite movie?

What’s yours?

Would you think less of me if you knew I told her my favorites were either “Cool Hand Luke” or “Shawshank Redemption?”

Why I immediately picked two prison flicks must have been because I’d spent the near entirety of the holiday weekend in the bosom of my family and had been influenced by all that loving incarceration.

But just last night the evergreen topic came up with my buddies in the sweet escape of my favorite tavern and I decided, no, my all-time favorite movie is “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

It’s flat-out hilarious, but I think I like it mostly because it has such a joyful abundance of essential humanity. I love the scene after Jonathan Winters has discovered “The Big W” and they’re all digging in a frenzy. The Winters character and Spencer Tracy catch each other’s eyes and at first appear mutually suspicious of one another.

Then Tracy surprises the big truck driver with a warm, gentle smile that seems to convey that, hey, everything’s going to be all right, we’re going to get through this together.

It only lasts about four seconds, but it’s maybe my favorite scene from maybe my favorite movie. I try and remember to smile just like that anytime I’m with someone who sounds afraid that things are not going to work out.

If anyone had asked me Sunday night to name my favorite movie, I’d have said, “Waitress.” We watched it with Josie.

It’s another movie imbued with a humanity so triumphant it practically shimmers, and watching it becomes heartbreakingly poignant when you know writer/director/co-star Adrienne Shelley was murdered at the age of 40 in an insane Manhattan ’06 neighbor dispute just as her first glorious movie was being critically hailed.

The movie also features an 80-year-old Andy Griffith in a scene-stealer role in what would be one of his last films. It’s great in so many ways.

Lots of days comedies are my all-time favorites. It could be either “SlapShot,” “Hot Fuzz,” “Zombieland,”  “Animal House,” or “The Big Lebowski.”

Many of my favorite movies feature men with holstered guns riding horses. There’s “Silverado,” “Red River,” “The Outlaw Josie Wales,” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence.”

Have I forgotten any?

Yes. There’s “Casablanca,” “Dave,” “Groundhog Day,” “Silver Linings Playbook,” and I’ll always find time to watch Paul Newman at maybe his best in “The Verdict.”

Of course, in about 12 hours you can disregard this entire list.

Because, guaranteed, tomorrow I’m going to have a movie I’ll with all my heart declare is my very favorite No. 1 movie of all-time.

See, when you spend so much time inflicting your movies on a teenage child, it’s only natural that she insists it’s her turn to reverse the role and take you to a movie she says is the very best.

Yes, tonight Josie’s taking me to see “Catching Fire.” She saw it last week and swears it’s the very best movie ever made.

So, of course, it’s going to be my favorite if for no other reason than it is hers.

What kind of father would I be if one of my favorites wasn’t one of hers?

And when it comes to my very favorites, nothing will ever top my two little girls.

Related . . .

Trouble with the curve? Trouble with the critics

1993, Hollywood’s best year

My one-time co-star Jodie Foster’s Golden Globe ramble

Oscars bore, movies suck

Fall movie potentials & Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Re-run Sunday! Life's short, church isn't

(851 words)

I haven't been going to church much lately, and part of me feels bad about that. But the part of me that's reclining on the couch relaxing feels good about it. I wish I felt less ambivalent about going to church, but that's a story for another day. And that makes today a good day to re-run this August 2010 story about how I felt when I was regularly going.

Hope to see you on Monday!

If it’s not the height of blasphemous hypocrisy then I can’t fathom what is: I’m in church to worship a man who died on the cross for my sins and silently complaining that standing for all six verses of “Thy Strong Word” is a real pain.

Of course, I don’t say that aloud, even though I know the entire congregation would agree. The service was in its 58th minute, another three minutes and even the Biblically patient Job would begin to fidget.

A good church service, much like a good sit-com, should never take more than 30 minutes.

Can I get an, “Amen, brother!”

Or at least a “Sit, Ubu! Sit!”

But does it matter if I complain aloud or just in my heart?

The preachers say God knows all, sees all.

(Theological aside: Does that mean He reads my blog? Most days, that would be really cool, but I wouldn’t want Him reading the days when I write about being prone to the seven deadly sins, something I’d do daily if it wasn’t for my rampant sloth).

Certainly, He must know this hymn drags on about three verses too long. Anyone within earshot knows that since verse four my graceless mumbling’s turned this 1969 devotional ditty into more hum than hymn.

It amazes me how much my mind drifts when someone’s preaching to me about the salvation of my everlasting soul. You’d think I’d be riveted.

But no, I think about golf. I think about the weather. I think about screwing the church organist.

I think the Lord is okay with that last one because the regular church organist is my wife and we were married right in that very church so it’s all on the up-’n’-up. But I could see how it’d be a bit of a gray area.

Val took the day off and so there was a substitute organist -- and if I wasn’t so danged slothful I’d try and conceive a lazy pun about organ transplants.

I don’t even need to look at Val to know what she’s thinking, something she expresses the instant we’re in the car headed home

“Guaranteed,” she says, “if I’d have been playing today, that service would have been over in 40 minutes!”

She’s right. She plays “Nearer My God to Thee” like it’s a John Philip Sousa march.

And the faithful love it. She plays beautifully. More important she plays fast. She is to the Lutheran hymnal what the heavy metal band Metallica is to thrash rock.

You can save a lot of souls with a speedy organist like that. Church attendance would rise proportionately to the reduction in worship minutes.

There’s parts of church I really love. I love the Bible readings, the gospel, and the dandy sermons our pastor delivers. He’s excellent.

And I love one really good, fast hymn. My favorite is “Just a Closer Walk With Thee,” but I can’t tell whether I like it because of its message or because an inmate sings a soulful version of it in “Cool Hand Luke,” and hearing it frees my mind to wander to great Paul Newman movies.

That could all be dispatched in about 35 minutes.

So how do I kill the extra 25 minutes when they’re talking about paving the parking lot, fixing the roof, the rote liturgy, etc.?

I resort to sacrilege and try to crack the kids up. Yesterday’s church bulletin featured an odd folk drawing of three identical angels. I took the little pencil and on the middle angel’s face drew a soul patch and showed it to Josie, 9.

She stifled a laugh and grabbed the pencil. On the first angel, she drew an eye patch and upped the hirsute ante by giving her angel a Satanic looking ‘stache and handed it back to me.

Soon the once heavenly trio looked like Hell’s Angels.

Josie asked me the other day why I pray so much, yet do a giddy little jig every time I get out of going to church.

It’s true. Every night, it’s me that gets down on my knees with the girls before Val tucks them in. And every night I say earnest prayers that God will help the lonely, the sick, the poor and all of those struggling in a world that too often seems godforsaken. I saw a picture of a young Filipino trash heap scavenger, showed it to the girls, and often include her for color in our nightly prayers.

I guess I’m more spiritual than religious, one being of God, the other of man. Many good people are like that.

Still, I think it’s important to give our children some religious foundation. Religious devotion provides much solace to many good people and I want my daughters to enjoy that option.

So if a little church can help accomplish that, so be it.

We all have our crosses to bear.

Maybe some Filipino trash scavenger will divine my plight and say a prayer that guys like me won’t have to stand for all six verses of “Thy Strong Word.”

The blacks, the blues & me

Even for someone as maniacally self-absorbed as myself, I recognize the thought as a delusional doozy: I’ve been feeling a soulful kinship with the old blacks who sing the blues.

This is odd because I’m white and don’t have the blues. If anything I’ve got the greens.

And by greens I’m referring to recycling and other environmental concerns. I try and eat a lot of leafy vegetables so that shades me green, too.

I’m certainly not green because of an abundance of currency. Money-wise, I guess I’m a white guy with the reds, red being the color associated with bleeding deficits.

But lately I can’t help but feeling I have a lot in common with Big Bill Broonzy, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and especially the great Buddy Guy.

And let’s pause for a moment to pay homage to the greatest name in the history of males. I have a lot of good buddies and know a lot of great guys, but wouldn’t it be cool to be friends with just one Buddy Guy?

He almost sounds like a beer-drinking superhero. “I was all alone and mopey the whole day then Buddy Guy showed up with a twelve pack to save the Happy Hour!”

His starring role on “Champagne & Reefer” with the Rolling Stones in the 2008 concert flick “Shine a Light” is as mesmerizing a performance as I’ve ever seen. His voice is such primal fury it practically blasts wispy Ron Wood off the stage.

He released a new collection of tried and true blues earlier this year. It’s called “Living Proof,” but it could as easily be called “Persevere,” -- maybe my favorite verb -- because the songs show he’s steadfast in his conviction nothing’s going to get him down.

I guess one of the reasons I’ve always been drawn to the blues is because the men and women who sing them never seem to have them. It’s as if singing about suffering somehow inoculates you against wallowing in it.

We do share that. I’m rarely unhappy.

Often baffled, yes, but not unhappy.

I’m baffled a fresh majority of Republicans think Newt Gingrich can be president, that people are falling for Alec Baldwin’s latest publicity stunt and that anyone’s the least bit happy there will be an NBA season.

But what’s becoming most baffling is how I sense my perseverance in the face of failure is making me iconic among my peers. I’m hearing it more and more from writers far more accomplished than I.

They say they admire me for having never gotten a real job and maintaining a lively blog that earns readers, but not money. Those are, incidentally, the exact reasons that make my darling wife wonder why she didn’t marry a plumber instead of me.

They say it’s cool how I never sold out (I don’t bother telling them you can’t sell what no one’s buying).

They hint my perseverance has given me, an arhythmic white guy, something the old blues men always had: street cred.

It’s a stunning turn of events for a guy who’s often mocked for picking up and recycling gutter trash, which gives me, I guess, stoop cred.

Somehow without trying I’ve become Paul Newman in “Cool Hand Luke,” a man imprisoned for stupidity who just won’t quit even as the camp bully thumps him to within an inch of his life. Stunned by Luke’s pain tolerance, his enormous opponent advises, “Stay down, man. You’re beat.”

“You’re gonna have to kill me to beat me,” he mumbles through bloody lips.

Spoiler alert: They do, indeed, kill him.

It’s one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies so it’s neat to hear peers express admiration for me for showing the same sort of bone-headed determination that got Cool Hand killed.

And that brings us back to around to the blues greats. I believe they persevered through hardship and rejection to do what they loved. With them, succeeding was never as important as just doing.

That’s the way it is with me.

I’m not quitting until all the rejection, the heartache, the sleeplessness and editorial betrayal kills me dead.

Until that happens I’ll be right here in this swampy little corner of the internet, forever bloggin’ the blues.

Life's short, church isn't

If it’s not the height of blasphemous hypocrisy then I can’t fathom what is: I’m in church to worship a man who died on the cross for my sins and silently complaining that standing for all six verses of “Thy Strong Word” is a real pain.

Of course, I don’t say that aloud, even though I know the entire congregation would agree. The service was in its 58th minute, another three minutes and even the Biblically patient Job would begin to fidget.

A good church service, much like a good sit-com, should never take more than 30 minutes.

Can I get an, “Amen, brother!”

Or at least a “Sit, Ubu! Sit!”

But does it matter if I complain aloud or just in my heart?

The preachers say God knows all, sees all.

(Theological aside: Does that mean He reads my blog? Most days, that would be really cool, but I wouldn’t want Him reading the days when I write about being prone to the seven deadly sins, something I’d do daily if it wasn’t for my rampant sloth).

Certainly, He must know this hymn drags on about three verses too long. Anyone within earshot knows that since verse four my graceless mumbling’s turned this 1969 devotional ditty into more hum than hymn.

It amazes me how much my mind drifts when someone’s preaching to me about the salvation of my everlasting soul. You’d think I’d be riveted.

But no, I think about golf. I think about the weather. I think about screwing the church organist.

I think the Lord is okay with that last one because the regular church organist is my wife and we were married right in that very church so it’s all on the up-’n’-up. But I could see how it’d be a bit of a gray area.

Val took the day off and so there was a substitute organist -- and if I wasn’t so danged slothful I’d try and conceive a lazy pun about organ transplants.

I don’t even need to look at Val to know what she’s thinking, something she expresses the instant we’re in the car headed home

“Guaranteed,” she says, “if I’d have been playing today, that service would have been over in 40 minutes!”

She’s right. She plays “Nearer My God to Thee” like it’s a John Philip Sousa march.

And the faithful love it. She plays beautifully. More important she plays fast. She is to the Lutheran hymnal what the heavy metal band Metallica is to thrash rock.

You can save a lot of souls with a speedy organist like that. Church attendance would rise proportionately to the reduction in worship minutes.

There’s parts of church I really love. I love the Bible readings, the gospel, and the dandy sermons our pastor does. He’s excellent.

And I love one really good, fast hymn. My favorite is “Just a Closer Walk With Thee,” but I can’t tell whether I like it because of its message or because an inmate sings a soulful version of it in “Cool Hand Luke,” and hearing it frees my mind to wander to great Paul Newman movies.

That could all be dispatched in about 35 minutes.

So how do I kill the extra 25 minutes when they’re talking about paving the parking lot, fixing the roof, the rote liturgy, etc.?

I resort to sacrilege and try to crack the kids up. Yesterday’s church bulletin featured an odd folk drawing of three identical angels. I took the little pencil and on the middle angel’s face drew a soul patch and showed it to Josie, 9.

She stifled a laugh and grabbed the pencil. On the first angel, she drew an eye patch and upped the hirsute ante by giving her angel a Satanic looking ‘stache and handed it back to me.

Soon the once heavenly trio looked like Hell’s Angels.

Josie asked me the other day why I pray so much, yet do a giddy little jig every time I get out of going to church.

It’s true. Every night, it’s me that gets down on my knees with the girls before Val tucks them in. And every night I say earnest prayers that God will help the lonely, the sick, the poor and all of those struggling in a world that too often seems godforsaken. I saw a picture of a young Filipino trash heap scavenger, showed it to the girls, and often include her for color in our nightly prayers.

I guess I’m more spiritual than religious, one being of God, the other of man. Many good people are like that.

Still, I think it’s important to give our children some religious foundation. Religious devotion provides much solace to many good people and I want my daughters to enjoy that option.

So if a little church can help accomplish that, so be it.

We all have our crosses to bear.

Maybe some Filipino trash scavenger will divine my plight and say a prayer that guys like me won’t have to stand for all six verses of “Thy Strong Word.”