Firemen Get The Most Ass

Years ago, before I was too old and bitter to think of myself as anything but the old and bitter person I had became, I told whoever would listen that I would grow up to be a fireman. I was around three at the time, dreaming of axes, donning helmets, rushing to disasters in a mad dash with sirens wailing and dalmatians howling.

I hoped to climb extended ladders up to tall buildings and smash the hell out of the glass windows to save whoever was inside, it wouldn’t matter who. I would be a firefighter and firefighters saved the lives of those in peril no matter their age, sex, or creed. All you had to do was act heroically.

This memory came back to when I was visiting my parents a few months ago and a little black cat got himself stuck in the mulberry tree in front of their house. My niece and nephew were there as well, and when I went out front and saw the kitten up in the tree and my little nephew at the base of it looking up concerned I said: “Don’t worry about him, he’s a cat. He’ll come down.”

We went inside, thinking our presence was what was keeping the little cat in his perch. Over an hour later we returned to the tree and there he still sat, silent and black and unmoving.

This perplexed me. I went to the garage and dragged my father’s old rickety ladder to the front yard so I could have a closer look. The ground around the tree was rooted and uneven and I found myself swaying a bit as I climbed the ladder, from both my clumsy placing of the ladder’s legs and the three or four beers I had drunk that afternoon.  

“Come here buddy. Come on down, let’s go. Easy enough,” I said to the cat.

I reached up, extending myself out from the tip top of the ladder, one hand stretched up towards the little black thing above me, the other gripping a mulberry limb.

“You alright buddy? You okay?”

The cat stared down at me, silent, completely still.

“What’s wrong, huh? What’s the problem?”

The little wet eyes just stared, wide and unblinking. I was sweating and I could feel my nephew looking up at us.

“Come on you little asshole, let’s go. Let’s get out of the God damned tree huh? What’s the problem?”

It was then that I got close enough to see that there indeed was a problem. The cat wasn’t simply holding onto a limb scared out of his wits, but had somehow got himself stuck between two limbs. He was completely wedged, furry undercarriage and one little paw hanging below the two tree limbs, the rest of him above.

I climbed down the ladder and explained the situation to my four year old nephew.

“Maybe we should call a fireman,” he said.

The little boy looked up at me and I realized this kid thought his uncle was some sorry ass who couldn’t come through when a little kitten’s life was on the line. How God damned embarrassing would it be to have a group of fireman drive up in the red truck and save a kitty in a tree?

I had known someone working to be a firefighter, a friend of a friend, and I hadn’t really warmed up to him. I thought it was interesting that he was getting into the field and had asked him about it at a bar one night.

“There’s hella school but firemen get the most ass,” he said and sipped his Redbull and vodka

I remember thinking it was probably true. Kids love firefighters, animals love firefighters, why not attractive women as well? Some six months later that same guy got into a situation where a cab driver accused him of attacking and beating him up. True or not the guy was denied the right to become a firefighter due to his record and is probably right now searching out an alternative means to “get the most ass”.

If a douche like that could almost become a firefighter than I could at least act like one. All it took was guts. I told my nephew there would be no need to call the fire department which made him look as sad and dejected as the cat 20 feet above us, then I went and dug some gloves up out of the garage.

I climbed the ladder and stretched out again from the tip top, reaching as far as I could. The cat stared down, silent and still as ever. Even fully extended I could barely touch him. I gripped a limb, reminding myself that I wanted my nephew’s respect for at least five more years, and leaned out into the air so I could push up into the little cat’s belly.

I gave him two firm pokes and he barely budged. He had so firmly wedged his tiny cat body between the limbs it would take a real shove. I leaned out again and thought about the fact that I could very well fall and break my neck and how that would affect my nephew.

I shoved a couple times and the suction between the limbs began to let go allowing the little furry body to begin to pop loose. I noticed the little bastard was starting to dig into the tree with his claws. If he wasn’t scared before he was absolutely terrified now.

“I’m worried he’s going to fall,” I yelled down to my nephew.

“He’ll land on his feet,” the boy said.

I wasn’t so sure. I started pushing and didn’t stop until I had forced the cat’s whole body from between the limbs. It was just his claws keeping him in the tree now but I wasn’t going to let up and give him a chance to fall back in the wedge. I reached out into space, trying to get a firm grip on him. He batted at me then jumped free, flying wild through the air. He slashed at three or four limbs on his way down, somersaulting through space until bang, like a shot he was on the ground running to the safety of the orchard across the road.

I climbed down, drenched with sweat and shaking a bit.

“He landed on his feet,” my nephew said.

“Yeah, I told you we didn’t need a fireman. We can handle it.”

The boy nodded absently before turning and entering the house, off to find his toy fire truck.

-November 20, 2012

Cloud Atlas, a Review

A few things I learned from tonight’s screening of Cloud Atlas, the new film by Tom Tykwer and the Wachowski siblings:

1) oil companies are even worse than the nuclear power industry,

2) Hugh Grant can’t do an American accent to save his life,

3) making up an Asian person in prosthetics to look Caucasian looks strange but not as ridiculous as the reverse, and

4) Hugo Weaving always plays every role as Agent Smith from the Matrix even when playing a woman. It gets old.

As you may or may not know the film (based on the novel by David Mitchell) follows six separate narratives and connects them by featuring the same actors throughout playing different characters by covering them in lavish makeup and prosthetics. One follows a man who builds a relationship with an escaped slave stowaway on a ship while dying of an illness in the late 1800’s, another follows a young composer in I believe the 1920’s, another, the exploits of a journalist in 1970’s San Francisco trying to scoop a nuclear power plant’s secrets, another in the present where an old man schemes to escape the old person’s home he’s been exiled to by his brother, another in the distant future where a replicant fights for her right to exist, and finally, another in an even more distant future where a sheep farmer helps a scientist find a means to communicate with someone off planet in hopes of escaping Earth (at least I think that’s what was happening there).

I was excited to see this film and while I have not read the novel it was based on I did read the New Yorker feature about the Wachowski’s which described the details of the sibling’s struggles to get the film made and piqued my interest before I had seen the previews. From what I picked up the film seemed to be different, maybe something not seen before, and damn ambitious. While ambitious (this is the most expensive independent film ever made) it is also mostly an unoriginal piece of work, infact almost a completely patched together recycling of other, better movies edited into one. Not that I’m saying you shouldn’t see it. If you have to go out to the movies then this has got to be the best thing out right now (besides The Master) and although that may be not saying much based on the current releases, I stand by that comment.

Here’s the thing: If you liked the Mad Max Trilogy then you’ll like this movie because both The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome are in this one. If you liked Michael Clayton then you’ll like this one as well with Halle Berry as a less interesting stand in for the Clooney character. If you liked The Matrix then you’ll really dig the part about that replicant, which even features the actor Jim Sturgess made up to look like Keanu Reeves and he even does some Neo moves in the real world (which doesn’t make much sense).

That section of the movie, titled “An Orison of Sonmi-451” was my least favorite part of the film due to it’s Matrix like qualities: futuristic video game like nonsense violence, cardboard characters, false sentiment, shallow revolution, etc. The Korean actress Bae Doona made it tolerable due to her doing one of the few interesting and nuanced performances in the film.

My favorite section of the movie by far is the story entitled “The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish” which had the whole theater laughing and applauding with joy. The story about a gang of senior citizens escaping an old person’s home was by far the most interesting and original threads of the movie and also featured the most un-Tom Hanks Tom Hanks performance as a blood thirsty cockney thug (by the way, in case I don’t get a chance to mention it, Tom Hanks is still the shit and acts the hell out of all 55 parts that he plays in this movie. PS: Halle Berry is still drop dead gorgeous too).

Overall, this movie comes very close to being good before getting blocked by a few too many desperate grabs at the emotions. If these directors are going to portray a suicide then they’re not going to just have the sound of a shot and loved one running towards the door, they’re going to have said loved one hold the dead body and cry hysterically while stroking the blown out skull cavity and covering themselves in blood. If someone says goodbye to another character then they are going to look at each other at least six times and single tear is going to roll down one of their cheeks. Personally, I feel you can tell the story of the human spirit’s resilience over the course of hundreds years and still employ subtlety.

That’s just one man’s opinion.

11-4-12

Why This Election Was like Game of Thrones

For those not familiar with George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels or the tv show they inspired called “Game of Thrones” I will do my best to give a brief summary of the first few books so I can then make my point of why the 2012 presidential election is a direct mirror of their plots and themes. The books are the story of the kingdom of Westeros, which is at peace for maybe the first 200 pages of the first novel before everything spirals into constant bloody warfare. Two forces battle for the power to rule over the future of the realm; one side is the rich, sinisterly attractive, and chronically incestious Lannister family and the other is the North led by the earthy, dead serious, and in some ways incredibly incompetent Stark family. While the Lannisters mostly lie, cheat, and betray to get their way, the Starks battle on stubbornly behind the fading causes of honor and loyalty, usually ending up on the sharp end of the sword.
While the war rages and consumes the lives of Westeros’s citizens, far up in the North sits a long wall of ice protecting the realm from the dark forces of Martin’s fantasy world: giants, wild men, snow demons, giant elk, and zombies (yes zombies, one of the reasons these books are kicking so much ass). This wall of ice has kept the forces of evil out of the realm for centuries to the point where the zombies and giants are no longer even considered real. Men deny they ever existed, calling them myths. The only people of the realm that warn against the ancient evils are the learned one’s, the scholars and what Martin calls maesters which are the Westero accivilant of scientists.
What many of Westero’s citizens are unaware of is that the ice wall protecting them from the north is starting to give. The wall is poorly defended by a rag tag collection of misfits with little training. Zombies are starting to pop up all over and Wild Men are being sighted on the southern side of the wall. The dark forces are attacking in record numbers and the Giants are riding mammoths!

Things are not looking good for the realm’s future, yet nobody gives a shit. The Lannister leaders are too concerned about their gold and their command and winning the war. The North is too caught up in revenge and killing the Lannisters. The regular citizens are too concerned with not getting brutally murdered in the crossfire and just making a living in the meantime. The very existence of the kingdom is at stake at the wall in the north but nobody wants to talk about it. Everyone is busy sweating and struggling and battling over their little piece of Westeros, thinking about surviving today and not concerned with tomorrow.

Now, let’s fantasy flash into the surreal world full of bizarre creatures and intrigue that we call the United States of America. We have two sides battling over the “realm” arguing over the economy, the definition of socialism, and whether pregnancy makes rape consensual. On one side we have a political party that’s rather earthy, serious, and in some ways  incredibly incompetent (that would be the Democrats). On the other we have Washington’s Lannisters, AKA the Republicans: rich, sinisterly attractive, and chronnically incestious (besides the attractive part, that nails it). Both sides are locked in battle, slashing with the economy, thrusting with taxes, and letting their archers (spin doctors) let fly their sharp pointed bolts of spin, lies, and misdirection. All the while our own wall is breaking and the dark forces are charging through.

Climate change is making its presence known with more and more impressive displays of natural havoc. First it’s a little melting up north. Then it’s a drier season in some country you’ve never heard of. Then mile long chunks of the ice caps are breaking off and whole sections of the country you never heard of’s population are starving to death. We used to at least talk about this.

Climate change was not mentioned once in the three lame ass presidential debates that took place last month, the first time those two words haven’t appeared in that arena in a generation. It’s a little insane that the one issue that could very well define the future of humankind on Earth was not mentioned by either Barack Obama, nor Mitt Romney, nor any of the the three moderators that resided over the debates. Not that the citizens watching and listening cared or really noticed either. Nobody might have noticed until a superstorm named Sandy came along and beat the shit out of the east coast. That was our real world version of a giant riding a mammoth.

11-3-12