Brian C. Petti's Blog, page 4

Sister Mercedes and the Temple of Doom–free ebook until April 6th!

Hi There!

To celebrate the publishing of my new ebook Sister Mercedes and the Temple of Doom,  I would like to send all my readers a free digital copy!   The book is based on posts here at Pettiplays blog.

Between now and April 6th, I will send you an email with a PDF copy that can be sent to your e-reader or read on your computer.  This offer is good for anyone you forward the email to as well.  If you don’t know me personally, I promise to cyber-burn your email as soon as I send the book. Please feel free to distribute it to anyone else who likes to read, likes to laugh, likes free stuff, or all three!  Send your email to me at bcpkid AT gmail DOT com.

Here’s all I ask.  Please post an honest review on Amazon, and ask the same of anyone you forward it to.  That’s it!  The book is available at http://www.amazon.com/Sister-Mercedes-Temple-Doom-ebook/dp/B00C479TN6/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1364731335&sr=8-7&keywords=brian+petti.

If you feel guilty about not paying (for all my Catholic readers out there), I am including a link to my friend Ron’s charity event, “Hope Swings Eternal: A Swing Night Benefit for the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital”.  A Neonatal Unit helped save his little girl Tegan’s life.  It is a more than worthy cause and I would be immensely happy if you could help.  Their website is: http://fundly.com/crownproductions?

Best,

Brian

Echoes of Ireland Sneak Peek

 

Happy St. Patrick’s.  This is the first of four monologues that make up Echoes of Ireland, which was recently picked up for publication by Eldridge Plays & Publishing.  For my maternal grandparents (Sullivans and Sheas) and paternal grandparents, (Pettis and Raffaniellos)

This play was produced in County Cork, Ireland by the Skibbereen Theatre Society as as a fundraise for Gorta, an Irish famine relief organization that works in sub-Saharan Africa.  No one should ever go hungry again.  Their website link is on the right side of this page if you are so inclined.

Have a good weekend.

Echoes of Ireland
by Brian C. Petti

Copyright 2010 © by Brian C. Petti

County Cork, Ireland, 1860

Have you ever been hungry? Not that late for supper growl you get on your way to a meal, no. I mean the in-your-bones hunger, the kind that nary lets you think of ought else. The two days since and for all you know two days hence type. The hunger stirred in the pit of your belly, bourne of far too many days providing less that what a belly require, less than what a proper soul depends upon to thrive. Have you known that hunger, lads?

To understand me, to comprehend how I stand before you ten years hence breathing the air upon the wind of County Cork, and all the seeming health that sails with it…you have to know the hunger that can turn a proper soul improper. There were crimes enough. There are judgments we’ve yet to repay, dwelling on this earthly green. And there were crimes enough committed ‘gainst us, that are beyond any earthly judgment I can reckon. And at the root of it all, tangled up in its sinew and vine, forcing all that blackness up through the ground and into God’s light there is one word, one notion—hunger.

Crops had failed before. I had heard tell, having tilled a parcel with me father since I were a wee lad in service to the same landlord. I worked me land, but I didn’t truly own me land, you see. But t’were mine nonetheless. Me Da, he taught me every stone of the place, and after he died out in that parcel is where we buried him. I knew that land like you know a woman. Actually, thinking about what I know of me Caitlin, I believe I knew the land a tad better. It fed me two girls. It gave me what little I had in me pocket any given time. It provided me any right I had, at eight and twenty years of age to be calling meself a man. I asked no more than to be doing me work, to have a meal for Caitlin and the two young ones at the end of the day, and to share a spot with the boys at Jimmy’s Pub upon the odd Friday—and Lord knows no more was ever visited upon me. Simple wants and simple pleasures. I was married and familied as we all were. We went to church Sunday as we all did and prayed with the same words. I yelled too much, or drank too much on the rare occasion, did me penance and moved on fresh to pull the crop from the ground once again.

‘Twasn’t a surprise when the famine come. We’d heard it coming in gossip and whispers. But to actually see those pieces of coal staring out of the ground like the cold, black eyes of the old serpent himself… What’s a potato? Not much. A bit to feed a soul. Wasn’t there corn enough? Weren’t there cattle enough to slaughter? And there were. On ships leaving the ports of Erin each day, off to keep England in beef and the rest of the world in corn, while those who tended the land… Everything we raised we sold, see. If you wanted to keep your land and not be turned out by the landlord, you did so. Potatoes alone could be grown enough to eat and sell as well. All the tenable land raised grass to feed the cattle. Only potatoes took hold in the leftovers. Hills and plains of rolling emerald, green the like of which there’s none to match in the known world. Cow food. What we ate, and lived upon, and fed our children with…t’was brown. And now t’was black.

The small farmers fell upon the mercy of the large crop farmers. The big farmers pled their cases to the landlords. The landlords turned to the absent owners, far away in England…there were no mercy to be found there. And you can be certain no mercy trickled down to the poor of County Cork. Those who could afford to feed their own locked their hearts to us. The church locked its front gate. And poverty locked its chains upon us. But the ports, they stayed open, every day without fail for five years, sending our food to foreign soil while Ireland’s children starved. While me own children starved. When the last of what little we had was gone and the prospect of replacing it were gone as well, we fell into a routine of survival, Caitlin and meself. I took the man’s role, and went into town each day to try to find work with the Irish relief, on the off chance they’d throw me a few scraps to dig a ditch that was of no earthly value to anyone. Caitlin took the woman’s part, traveling to a neighboring town with the girls to beg in the streets. I couldn’t have her doing it in me own town, see. Not if I were a man who aimed to keep me pride. So I sent me own wife and children out to strangers to do me begging for me. So’s I could keep me pride intact, see. That was the theory.

After months of living on the scraps we could beg or steal, Caitlin began to leave the girls at home and venture out herself. When she brought back more than she had before, I didn’t ask how or why. I should have. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to know what I already knew. Because how could a man live, knowing such a thing? The depths a mother would plumb to feed her children. So I remained unawares.

So why not just leave, you may ask, and not having been there ‘tis a fair enough question. The simplest answer is that leaving took fare for passage, and hadn’t we enough just keeping body and soul together. But there were other answers too. Caitlin’s mother, who she fed the best she could until the fever finally stole the poor old woman’s breath. And our cottage, small enough to be meaningless to anyone but us, but still the place we watched our girls take their first steps—the older one careful and tentative and the younger one running headlong to beat the devil. It was ours. The only place meself and the lasses ever called home. Until the filthy landlord blaggards turned us out like shiftless beggars. And damn my soul, there was the land I thought would come back to me like a long lost love. The air, the grass, the sky I knew and loved all me life, even after it betrayed me. The land I couldn’t bring meself to hate…until I came home from digging me latest ditch to find the girls’ mouths stained green with it, wild with the hunger, trying to fill their bellies with the grass like they’d seen the English beef cattle do. That was the end, there.

By that time we were squatters, spending our cold nights in a lean-to with the one candle, hoping no one would roust us out. I spoke to Caitlin that night over the candle, spoke to her eye to eye, in a way I hadn’t in what seemed like years. I told her I was proud of her for the mother she was to me children, and that her mother would be too. She looked away. I can still see the shadows on her face from the flickering light. But I kept on. I told her the time had come to leave and stake our claim on another shore, what with our children desperate enough to chew cud with the cattle. We owed it to them to be done with this place at last. She began to cry then. And I…I thought it were due to what she’d suffered: the ignominy she endured to feed her girls, the meager life we’d been reduced to, the mother she’d lost to the fever. But t’wasn’t any of those things. She cried because she was with child.

We hadn’t had marital relations in over a year. When a body’s main concern is surviving until its next meal, all other considerations become secondary. Yet I was to be a father once again—me with the two green-stained mouths I couldn’t feed already.

There’s another word you need to understand if you’re to understand me. Shame. The shame of a working man all his days, now helpless and idle. The shame of not being able to provide for me children as God intended. The shame of sitting in the candlelight, with nothing between meself and the cold air but a piece of tarp, on a piece of soil that didn’t belong to me…across from a softly weeping woman who put herself in harm’s way for me and mine. How quickly we lost all we were. How quickly we were reduced to beggars and whores, who once were men and women of substance and pride. And in that moment, the hatred welled up inside me. I hated those who starved me family without conscience. I hated me father for teaching me to love the land. I hated the mocking green of the country I lived in. I hated me girls for being born. I hated Caitlin for the truth behind her tears. I hated God for abandoning us in our time of need. But most of all, lads, I hated meself. Most of all, I hated meself.

Caitlin couldn’t board a boat in her condition—if she survived the journey they’d have sent her back as soon as she landed. And I couldn’t leave her alone to starve and die. So I forged a letter from a distant cousin who lived in New York, who I never met, nor knew naught about. It said that he would sponsor me two girls to come across. I made up an address. We packed a sack for the lasses, told our 11-year-old girl to be the mother and care for her little sister…and we sent our babies out into this Godless world unguarded.

The letter didn’t come for eight months. For eight months we knew not a thing of our own children. Caitlin had another girl, and she was still nursing when the letter found us. It was from our oldest—I could tell by the scrawl on the envelope. She’d made it to New York, and even managed to find the relative we lied about by repeating his name often enough to anyone who’d listen. She was all right. She was alive, and being fed, thousands of miles away from this desolate place. But…our younger…didn’t survive the trip across. She died in me eldest’s arms, without a mother’s hands to soothe her or a father’s voice to calm her. The lost wages of vile desperation. And that’s all I can rightly say on that subject…

It’s now twelve years since that day. Ten years since the famine ended and the crop came back. Two hours since I had me last meal, and two hours until me next. Three weeks since I last heard from me daughter in the States. And a million years since Caitlin and meself have been able to look into each others eyes without a twinge of pain. We had two more girls, in our attempt, like the rest of Ireland, to repopulate the country after the food came back. So now we have four, plus the one we lost. And I till the land again, and we go to church as we did, and I have a few more pints than I used to on the odd Friday. But it’s all make believe. Like we’ve all already died once and we’re waiting for it to become official this time. We laugh without joy and we sing without passion. We know what’s under the rolling green, and we know what hides in the heart of the man or woman next to us. And we’ve not been able to forget what hunger feels like. And I fear we never will…

Security

Mychal’s hair is just so.

His father guides the car down the steep mountain slope that empties into the little town where his school is. The 5th grade concert starts at 7pm and Lindsey is going to be performing. Mychal made the mistake of telling his older brother about her, and now it’s out there. He touches his pocket where the five dollar bill his father gave him is safely tucked.

“Buy her a drink,” his father teases. “You’ll be all gentlemanly.”

“I will.”

“But if she asks you to buy her food you have to end the relationship.”

“Like the ‘locked car door test’ in A Bronx Tale.”

“Exactly. If she offers to get a drink for you too, she’s a keeper.”

The car continues its descent.

“The guy in that movie says you get three great women in your lifetime.”

“That’s about right.”

Mychal pauses for a moment. “Can Mom be one of them? I don’t mean like to marry her…

His father’s lips spread a close-mouthed smile. “Absolutely. She’s my number one.”

“Dad?”

“Yuh?”

“You know when you get married and there’s the bridesmaids and best man and maid of honor…?”

“Yeah. And the groomsmen, I think they’re called.”

“Is there like a ‘man of honor’?”

“That’s the best man. Him and the maid of honor are equal.”

“But there’s no ‘man of honor’? ‘Cause I’d probably want Conor to be my best man and you to be ‘man of honor’.”

“Parents are separate. They’re in the wedding party, but they’re not bridesmaids or groomsmen. They get to be at the big table. So don’t worry, when you marry this Lindsey girl I’ll be there.”

“Dad,” Mychal says with mock incredulity. He gets the joke.

The road straightens, the decline leveling off.

“Ari was wearing his flaming shirt today.”

“And by flaming you mean ‘really, really gay’?”

“No, Dad. It was literally flaming.”

“So it was on fire.”

“No, it had flames on it. Dad.”

The school parking lot. His father pulls the car to the front of the school doors, and hits the curb by mistake.

“It’s supposed to be here, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you go inside and check it out and give me the high sign?”

No way. “Can you just come in with me? Then you can go back to the car if you want.”

“Oh, I’m going back to the car. I’m not hanging out at a 5th grade dance.”

“Concert.”

His father backs the car into a parking space and they make their way across the parking lot. The light stanchion is buzzing that lonely parking lot song.

“Can you still hold my hand now that you have a girlfriend?”

“Dad. I’m in grade school.” They lock hands.

“Can I have a hug?” Mychal asks.

“Of course.” They’re both stepping up on the curb when they hug, so it’s awkward and discordant.

There’s a bored looking guard at the lobby desk with the word “SECURITY” emblazoned across his chest in yellow against black.

“Is there some kind of concert tonight?” his father asks.

“Yup. Right down the hall.”

“OK kiddo, you’re all set.” His father gives Mychal a quick squeeze, careful not to muss his hair.

“I’ll only be like 45 minutes.”

His father is already moving back toward the door. “I’ll be in the parking lot. Have a good time.” Over his shoulder, his father calls “Thank you!” to the SECURITY-emblazoned man.

And Mychal is off.

Other Side of the Coin…

Just as I was reeling from my latest bombardment of rejection letters, leading directly to my latest blog (http://pettiplays.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/rejection-letter-rigoletto/), life goes and throws me a curve. My play “Echoes of Ireland” was picked up for publication by Eldridge Plays and Musicals. Sometimes (at least for today) all the rejection is worth it! Here is from their very nice acceptance letter, in the interest of equal time:

“Dear Mr. Petti,

The best plays stir many emotions and thus we couldn’t agree more with the description you provided with your play, Echoes of Ireland. The Cunynghamclan’s journey from raw hunger in Ireland to heroic duty In New City is “part tragedy, part comedy, part history lesson and all undeniably human.”

These empathetic monologues are captivating and universally human. We were very moved reading them and would be proud to offer your play to our

customers for, hopefully, standout performances in the future.”

Not as entertaining for my blog, but better for my psyche! Information on the play including a sample monologue can be found here: http://pettiplays.wikispaces.com/Echoes+of+Ireland

Rejection Letter Rigoletto

What the rejection letter says:

“Dear Brian,

Thank you for sending us a sample of your play Banshee. Although we congratulate the wonderful reception your Fringe production received, regrettably the play does not meet our needs at this time. We wish you luck in placing Banshee elsewhere.”

What the playwright hears:

“Dear Talentless,

You must be kidding, right? Did you really think, for one second, that this twee attempt at a play would ever be good enough for us? I mean, we’ve seen our share of absolute crud. Believe me, you should see some of the junk that passes through this place. Sometimes, when we’ve had about enough, we read some of this insipid dialogue aloud to each other and laugh and laugh, all the while despairing the degraded state of American letters. Sometimes we have a script fire, while other times we crumble up individual pages and play an impromptu game of baseball with an empty paper towel roll.

Your sample, however, was not even good enough to be hit for a double. In fact, while reading it I threw each of the pages into a birdcage we keep on the premises in the eventuality of such a remarkably pedestrian effort. If it is any consolation, Mr. Greenfeathers seems particularly fond of excreting on page eight. Having been forced to read page eight myself, I cannot say I blame him. In fact, I think he was a good deal more forgiving than I would have been.

Since we receive so many, many scripts that have gone on to wonderful critical and commercial success in the States and abroad, we sometimes find it hard to adequately respond to the losers who send in such self-indulgent offal (such as yourself, in case you are more delusional than I previously imagined). I have made an exception in your case in an attempt to guide your future submission to this esteemed theatre, if you actually find the gumption to ever pick up a pen once more.

Your characters most resemble stick figures, if stick figures lacked emotional depth. Your dialogue sounds like it was overheard, verbatim, at the Customer Service desk of a local Wal-Mart (if one existed in the town of this theatre’s residence, which it certainly DOES NOT! due to the timely staging of a three-act masterpiece entitled Retail Rigoletto and the Wal-Martian Invasion –THIS is the type of art that inspires us! It even has puppets!) Your play’s construction best resembles the literary equivalent of a lean-to, precariously wavering on the side of a deserted road, housing an unemployed man, his ugly, insipid wife and three snot-ridden children of questionable hygienic quality. I would call the sample of your play ineffective and lacking the evocation of a single true and noble sentiment, but that would be too kind. I found myself, with each passing phrase, more and more insulted, as if each line were a tiny slap in the face from the glove of an extremely small French nobleman. By the merciful end of your sample, an emotional and physical state overtook me that I can only compare to an unfortunate occasion when I was pummeled thrice in the groin by a writer to whom I had given a particular scathing review.

Except HER play was way better than yours. 

In summation: your feeble attempt at creation makes me feel as if I were punched repeatedly in the balls. Please refrain from sending us any more of the oily drippings from whatever psychotic region of your tiny brain is now controlling what I cautiously refer to as your “higher functions” (unless, of course, Mr. Greenfeathers becomes in need of another cage-lining, in which case we will accept your submission wholeheartedly). Better yet, please take the following steps as expeditiously as humanly possible:

please break all the fingers on your writing hand
please break all the fingers on your non-writing hand (in case of latent ambidexterity)
please remove all paper on which words can be written or printed from your domestic abode, including toilet
please erase from existence, via burning or computer deletion, every “clever” idea you think you’ve had
schedule yourself for a lobotomy

When these suggested steps have been taken, please feel free to submit to this theatre once more. I’m sure we can find a few restrooms that could benefit from your particular talents. Good luck placing Banshee anywhere but here.”

Slow, Stupid, Dirty Commercials!

With the Super Bowl approaching, and its compendium of almost tolerable commercials, I thought I’d do a list of the five worst current ads on the air today. Not just the bad ones—let’s face it, even the good ones are kinda bad—but the nauseating, irritating, “how could someone possibly have gotten money to make that” ones.

In no particular order, and without using brand names if possible, here we go:

1. “Slow, stupid, dirty PC!” This one is almost the bad commercial perfect storm. To have all the precise ingredients for utter badness, you have to sprinkle in awful writing, add a dash of horrible acting, serve a heaping helping of cheap sets, and salt it all with one boring, stationary camera angle that has been the commercial standard since Ug tried to sell Oog a really cool rock back in caveman times. Four for four! I want to give the actress a break because there are few ways to say a line like “Slow, stupid, dirty PC!” even remotely “correctly”, unless you are doing high-tech dominatrix porn. But alas, I think a porn star would have done a better job.

2. “I am o…ver…whelmed by you.” First of all, this is a love song to beer. Right there you lost me. Not because people don’t have unhealthy relationships with beer that border on fanatical obsession. There are people out there who want nothing more than to pop out of a vat of suds with a stupid smile on their face and reenact Rocky Balboa at the top of the steps. Granted. But no one…I repeat NO ONE…would do it to that insipid, trite, vapid, stuck-in-the-70s, piece of crap song. “You make me laugh and show me how, just how good this life can be / And in our moments filled with joy, is where I live, where I am free…” Stop. Please, just shut up. It sounds like Dan Fogelberg and James Taylor had a baby that was adopted and taught masculinity by Supertramp. In case you’re wondering, I don’t mean that in a good way.

3. “Two tickets to paradise.” This one has gotten a lot of buzz, with people coming down on either the “that’s hysterical” side or the “that’s too sad for words” side. Put me squarely with the latter. I was never a big Eddie Money fan, but I’m old enough to remember his live video for “Hold On” on MTV. He was young, he had at least 30 fans packed into that club, and he had a forgettable pop hit. Good times! Look at him now. Selling out the crumbling remnants of his singing career in thirty frightening, bug-eyed seconds. How much money, exactly, was that worth? Really, how many trucks of cash would they have to back up to make you poop all over whatever dignity you have left, in public, forever on film, so an advertiser can get an cheap laugh at your expense? Think that’s bad? Entertain this thought: maybe it wasn’t the money. Maybe (gulp) Eddie thought the exposure would actually help him! Maybe he thinks if people are talking about him, even if they’re laughing, it’s better than the lonely, soulless existence of being a has-been who hasn’t been mentioned by ANYBODY for thirty years. Oh my God! I have to stop, I’m getting myself depressed.

While we’re on the subject, if someone were to throw a hand-grenade into the Geico advertising department during a staff meeting, he or she would be doing the world a huge favor. I know I wasn’t going to mention brand names, but that was so they wouldn’t get free advertising. I mention Geico only to say no one should ever condone Geico’s commercials by actually using their services. They have twelve different campaigns going on at once and none of them are funny. Not one. The gecko doing a Chicago accent? The witch inexplicably laughing like a hyena every time she flies a new broom? The pig flying with those scary looking stewardesses? The two idiots with the banjos? The pig’s car breaking down with a too willing young girl? The pig doing anything? If they have so much money lying around to pump out a new bad commercial every three days, how much are they ripping off their customers? I want answers!

Plus they ruined Eddie, or stood by idly while he ruined himself which is the same thing

4. “I am a Mama’s boy”. I almost forgot this one. There is a certain long distance company that hired a certain Mexican man to expound upon his sick relationship with his mother. He’s somewhere in his 40′s, overfed since birth and really, really needs to cut the damn umbilical cord already. Over the sound of mariachi music (which in itself I find insulting, on behalf of every Mexican person I ever knew), Fatty Sanchez proudly explains how he calls his mother every day and how “every family has a favorite, and I am my mother’s” or some similar nonsense. Not only does the man in the commercial inspire the desire to slap him, he makes you wonder about his poor, unloved siblings back in Mexico who probably have to feed Mama strained taco salad with a baby spoon as she raves endlessly about her favorite son, while Junior lives it up in Minneapolis and sends a check when he feels like it. I can only hope they made his childhood a living hell.

5.  “As seen on TV” commercials are almost too easy to include on this list, with their litany of idiots who cut themselves shaving their nostril hair, or push the cotton swabs in their ears until they recoil in pain because they hit their tiny, tiny brains. The acting is universally horrid, the writing worse and the sets are built by the guys who didn’t get hired for the “dirty PC” ad. But there’s one that stands out above the rest. There’s a blackout. Everyone runs around in a tizzy. But candles never give enough light. Flashlights never have batteries, and when they do, they only emit a thin, narrow stream of light. Here’s where the commercial starts to spiral. To exemplify the relative uselessness of the aforementioned flashlight, the director has his bad actress try to eat dinner with a fork and knife while holding the flashlight illuminating the plate with her neck. Of course the flashlight falls into her supper (while she does her best to seem appropriately annoyed), underscoring the need for the lantern being hawked.

Poppycock. What moron, even in a blackout, would try to hold a flashlight with her neck while eating dinner? Couldn’t she possibly put the flashlight NEARBY, maybe pointing toward her plate if she’s really blind as a bat? Couldn’t she eat by candlelight? Couldn’t they all go out to the Chinese food place the next town over? Does the manufacturer of this piece of junk really want us to buy this particular line of BS reasoning? IF there is a blackout and IF candles just aren’t good enough for you and IF you find a flashlight beam too narrow for your precious self and IF you lack the common sense to avoid dropping said flashlight into your beef stroganoff, THEN you really need to buy this product!

I could go on (and on). But unlike Geico, I know when to just stop. By the way, you may notice the omission of a certain big-haired insurance rep named Flo. This is for one reason only: the line “These are troubling times in the kingdom.” A well-delivered, reasonably clever line is as rare in commercial advertising as Halley’s comet, and should not be discouraged.  

Wait…My Kids are Going to Live WAY Longer Than Me!

I don’t know if you heard yet, but it’s 2013. 20-freakin’-13. Wasn’t it just 1982? Didn’t I just get a cable box with two rows of press buttons in order to watch HBO when it came on at 4PM? Or MTV, so I could see the Buggles video six times in a half hour? Video killed the radio star—put all the blame on VCR. Which replaced Beta, which was replaced by DVD, which was almost replaced by Blu-Ray except nobody wanted to re-buy every movie they owned, which is now replaced by .AVI files, which means you don’t have to buy any movies ever if you know where to download them.

What the hell happened?

My oldest son will graduate high school in 2017. That’s the year in that Billy Joel song about the futuristic demise of New York City. In 1976, it was some faraway, mystical number we would never reach, like 1984 for Orwell and 2001 for Stanley Kubrick and 1999 for the artist now known again as Prince. Prince is 54 years old. Swear to God, I just looked it up on the internet. It took 0.31 seconds. If we were playing tag football, that would be like “One, Mi…” Blitz!

People used to talk on phones. Then there was email, instant messaging, Facebook, Skype and texting. Now we type, play games, take pictures and record hip-hop songs on phones. (By the way, my Office program is trying to tell me there are no such words as “Facebook” and “texting”. Things are moving way too fast.) You used to cook everything in the oven or the stove. Then there were toaster ovens—good for hot dogs. Then microwaves—even better for hot dogs. Now we have a George Foreman grill (remember that fearsome monster who almost killed Joe Frazier—he’s cuddly and makes grills now!) that cooks hot dogs in about 0.31 seconds. We are ALL OVER hot dog making.

Every song I’ve ever heard in my lifetime can be contained on one Ipod. Every book I could ever read is contained on my Kindle. I don’t have any physical photos anymore. I can watch an entire series of a TV program in two days, without commercials. I can watch what was on last night at 10AM the next morning, or three weeks from now. Video games today make Space Invaders seem like checkers. I can send forty play submissions out in a day without leaving my seat or paying for postage. I never have to go to bed wondering what the name of the guy who played the head of KAOS in “Get Smart” was, because the information is a keystroke away. I’ll give you 0.31 seconds to look it up. One Mi…back already? Then you know Bernie Kopell was Siegfried, the Vice President in charge of Public Relations and Terror at KAOS. Bernie was Doc on “The Love Boat” and was born in Brooklyn to Pauline ( Taran) and Al Bernard Kopell, if Wikipedia is to be believed. And why should we ever, ever doubt it?

I’m 43, three months away from 44, which in 1982 I only thought of as Reggie Jackson’s uniform number. I’m technically middle-aged, though in reality living until 88 is probably going to be a stretch. If I make it another forty years, I may be around to see the dawn of 2053. My sons will be 53 and 50. My wife will be…right next to me when I go, ’cause there’s no WAY I’m outliving her. Even if we break longevity records there’s no chance either of us see the next century, and only the slimmest of chances our kids reach that faraway summit. Which is not all that far away when you think about it, really.

Funny thing is, I’m just starting to figure out what I’m doing here. I don’t have it down yet. I may never. It may take the rest of my forty-year or so allotment. Not a lot of time.

Good thing I didn’t have to waste more than 0.31 seconds on Prince. Blitz!    

Let’s NOT Have a Conversation

Freedom is a slippery thing.

In recent memory we, as a country, were asked to give some of it up in order to secure a greater good. Our rights to privacy were lessened so that government agencies, we were told, could more quickly and accurately detect terrorist activities. This was in the aftermath of 9/11. I have no way of knowing if the sacrifice was worth it, besides the obvious fact that we haven’t had another attack. Many of us weren’t happy about it—I know I wasn’t.

But my happiness was immaterial. A decision was made that a sacrifice was needed, because the situation called for some sort of action. Things couldn’t go on the way they were any more, after such a dreadful tragedy. It was the price of doing the business of protecting the country. I was there in New York on 9/11. I walked out of 5 World Trade fifteen minutes before hell broke loose. I’m a pacifist, but I wanted an eye for an eye. Our anger was real, as was our resolve that what happened that day should never happen again. How that anger and resolve was misused in the following years is a topic for another day.

There is only one topic today. It’s those children and the brave adults who protected them. It’s beyond words I have the ability to provide. I do not wish to diminish the grief we all feel by talking about guns. But guns need to be part of the discussion.

In the immediate aftermath of the Newtown shootings, gun advocates and gun control advocates jumped to their positions. “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” “People kill people WITH guns.” Plenty of well-meaning folks suggested that this wasn’t the time to talk about the issue. Others suggested we needed to “have a conversation” as a nation at some unnamed time in the future. Still others said we should be talking about mental health, not guns.

I respectfully disagree. Now is the time to talk about it. We don’t need a future “conversation”. The issue is complex, and mental health is a part of it, but not the only part.

Here’s what I need to know from my American brothers and sisters who resist gun control: what price freedom? Is your right to own an assault weapon worth a life? Would you be willing to sacrifice it for a greater good? If your answer is “no” I’m guessing that you believe there is no connection between the availability of these weapons and the rash of mass killings we have been experiencing in this country. Our mental health system isn’t working. If someone really wants to kill, they will find a way. If you take away the guns, only the criminals will end up with them.

Nearly none of the perpetrators of these mass killings came out of our mental health system. There were signs of trouble, yes, but few of them were medicated or institutionalized. The idea that these were obviously crazy people who could have been stopped if only a psychiatrist had signed them in for treatment is a myth. These are sad, desperate young men who live on the outskirts of inclusion. We need to be able to identify them before they snap, and mental health professionals can help improve that in the future. But blaming the mental health system for their actions is a smokescreen.

If I really want to get to the Stewart’s in my town, there are various ways to do so. I could walk. I could ride a bike. I could call a taxi. But I’m not going to do any of those. I’m going to drive my car, because it’s the EASIEST way for me to get where I need to go. If someone really wants to kill, they will find a way. Agreed. And if someone wants to kill the most amount of people in the least amount of time, they are going to use an automatic weapon. That’s why our troops use assault rifles and not bows and arrows. In the recent shooting, 26 lives were ended in about two and a half minutes.

But if we make laws banning automatic weapons, next you’ll come after my other guns.

Ah. There’s the rub. You want your gun. You feel safer with it. Maybe you hunt. Maybe you just think it’s incredibly cool. Either way it’s your constitutional right and you’re not gonna give it up until they pry that gun from your cold, dead hand. You want to protect that right, so you adopt certain beliefs: that this is a fundamentally dangerous country, that there are gun toting criminals we need to protect ourselves against. That if they have the guns, we need to as well. That a few renegade lunatics are no reason to start banning guns. That it’s not the guns’ fault. And maybe you believe every one of those things are true.

But so is this. The price of the right to own a gun is in lives. That’s the cost of doing business. The price of “freedom”. Lives. Access to firearms makes it easier to kill. I find it hard to understand arguments against this statement as anything more than simple denial. Automatic weapons are made to kill quickly and efficiently. So are rifles and handguns. And they do. It is their raison d’être.

Are we willing to continue to pay that cost? Or will we change?  What price freedom?