You're Not the Boss of Me

So says good friend Tom Grady, jokingly repeating the classic schoolyard retort, when told to "have a nice day." Similarly, police officers sworn to uphold the law have repeated it to legislators who have ignored those law enforcement officials and - gasp - enacted laws they thought were prudent and appropriate,

The high-profile mass murders in the last year have begun a firestorm of frantic lawmaking, scathing accusations of indifference to the deaths of innocents and - shocker - political posturing of the most self-serving kind. Of course, the debates...such as they are...have spurred the usual suspects into fits of colossal, soaring rage.

Recently, President Obama paid a visit to our picturesque state to.... Well, he made a speech surrounded by a collection of prop-cops in support of gun control measures under consideration by the US Senate. The fact that, despite hectoring to the contrary, Americans seem of two minds about gun control hasn't dissuaded either side from the usual haranguing.

Across town, a collection of County Sheriff's gathered as a "prebuttal." Their stated aim was to refute many of the President's points. Along the way one of them called the Governor of Colorado a liar. They took the occasion to repeat their oft-offered positions that the new gun control laws, those proposed as well as those recently enacted, are silly, knee-jerk reactions to the murders of twelve people in Aurora and twenty-six in Connecticut. This in the shadow of several of these sheriffs having previously stated they would not enforce these laws.

The Last Reel

"Caligula is sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash. If it is not the worst film I have ever seen, that makes it all the more shameful: People with talent allowed themselves to participate in this travesty. Disgusted and unspeakably depressed, I walked out of the film after two hours of its 170-minute length. 'This movie,' said the lady in front of me at the drinking fountain, 'is the worst piece of shit I have ever seen.'"

Thus did Roger Ebert, who died today at 70, review the movie Caligula. One might conclude that he did not like it.

 He liked what he liked and eviscerated the things he did not. His show with Gene Siskel, an affable sort who played good cop to Ebert's bad, drew excellent ratings due, in part, to Ebert's sharp tongue.

Where Ebert really shined was in print. He was a writer's writer, a craftsman whose prose could snarl, dismember and disembowel.I learned to attend a movie first and then read his review - invariably I would love the movies he thought were average, and doze during ones over which he fawned.

I read him, nevertheless. He may have been a keen, insightful observer of the motion picture art form. His understanding of how to tell a story on the big screen might have been breathtaking. Maybe he was a great guy, or a prig. I don't have any way of knowing.

He was one hell of a writer, a giant.

The Last Out

"And they'll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces." Terrance Mann, Field of Dreams,1989.


"Mom had a heart attack."

My wife's brief phone call about her mother's health crisis was at once ominous and misleading. Jean Carter was a cancer survivor - this, too, would be treated. We were in LA, at one of Pat's PhD residencies - she in class and me at lunch. Over the next twenty-four hours, as we sat marooned by weather, the news from her family members went from bad to worse. This time, there would be no rally. Family at her side, Jean passed.

I was privileged to spend many summer days in her company. Scorecards in hand (she always brought her own pencil), flawless green grass before us and the Rockies in all their maddening splendor - the drama unfolded. We recorded the details, argued about the rules and cheered even when Our Team gave us very little provocation. Sometimes, the Official Scorer saw it one way and Jean saw it another. "He's got his scorecard," she would growl, "and I have mine."

One magnificent, flawless afternoon the Rockies indulged in a fairly common bit of inanity. There were several errors on a play that should have resulted in an out, but somehow Our Heroes scored two runs. Laughing, cheering - disbelief - one of our row neighbors turned to Jean and said "So, how are you gonna score that?"

Of course, she had a solution.

Her virtues were beautifully recounted during the week her family spent celebrating her life. Her son Jim's moving eulogy, delivered with just the right tone, represented a keynote of sorts. Her story belongs to them, and they tell it well.

But, whenever I am in the presence of baseball, she is a memory I cannot brush away.

Brothers in Arms

"Who was wrong, and who was right? It didn't matter in the thick of the fight."*

The man was clearly having a mental health episode.

One of our motor officers, a big guy with many years of experience, stopped at what looked like a motorist assist. The driver did not believe he was a police officer. Two Denver officers - a guy with a '93 badge number and a thirty-ish woman - arrived, because the guy had been on the phone to their dispatch alleging a crime in their city. The driver didn't think they were cops, either. The fight was on, and the three officers cuffed the guy up and loaded him into a Denver car. Then I showed up.

Friday was beautiful; 60s, sunny with just the mildest breeze.Cycling weather. I wore a blue uniform polo top (a "jersey" to bike riders), cargo cycling pants and arm warmers. I'm the one he thought was the police officer. Plainly, we needed to get this guy to a hospital.

Here's a Test

Gust Avrocados: "All right, here's a test. You see the nerdy-looking kid in the white shirt. playing [chess] against the four guys at  once? Which one of them is a strategic weapons expert with the CIA?"
Charlie Wilson: "Oh.... Huh...."
Gust: "It's a trick question, Charlie - it's the nerdy-looking kid in the white shirt. No reason this can't be fun, you know."

Charlie Wilson's War

Here's a test....

A free copy of Out of Ideas to the first person who can tell me who Grissom, White and Chaffee are. Don't google it - that's cheating. If you already own an e-copy your gift certificate will buy anything on the Wild Child menu. Winner to be determined by me.

Not one of us...EVER

RE: The asshole that killed two people who had nothing to do with anything, then shot a bunch of cops and killed one of them.

You were never one of us. We are dedicated to life. We protect the vulnerable, the frightened, the souls who are damaged and distraught. We run toward trouble, knowing we are the best equipped to handle danger, to suggest, facilitate and as a last resort impose solutions. We are brave when scared, focused though exhausted and accepting of criticism from those with half of the information we possess and even less sense. We prevail, we embolden and, through our sacrifice make ours a better community.

We don't publish a murder manifesto and then carry it out.

You were never one of us. Your former employer had you pegged.

UPDATE - for some unknown, insane reason the guy doing the killing has become a folk hero to a very small, deluded few. I don't really remember his name and will make no effort to do so. Michael Crain, on the other hand, lost his life in ambush to this madman. Officer Crain was a Marine Corps veteran, a SWAT cop and a field training officer. He left a wife and two young children behind.

Monica Quan and Keith Lawrence were his first known victims - she was twenty-eight and he twenty-seven. Their sin? Her father represented the asshole in his termination hearing and didn't win.

Hero?

UPDATE: "Awaiting identification of the remains...."

So, the book is closed, except - two more officers shot, one fatally. Another family robbed of years with their loved one, another community mourning the loss of a hero. Senseless, pointless. In the end a single gunshot from the suspect that said "I'm a coward. I can't face you unless I have a gun and an advantage."

Dirt in the Skirt

Ernie Capadino: Mmm-hmm. They'll pay you 75 dollars a week.
Kit Keller: We only make 30 at the dairy.
Ernie Capadino: Well then, this would be more, wouldn't it?

Lavonne Paire Davis passed away this week at 88. She was 19, and a welder in a shipyard in 1944 when she was recruited to play professional baseball in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. She played the better part of ten seasons, and served as consultant, and template, for the 1992 movie A League of Their Own. Fictional lead character Dottie Hinson (played by Geena Davis) was inspired in large part by her experience.

In the great scheme of professional athletics an asterisk? The league stood up during "the war years" because so many male baseball players had entered military service. Major league baseball didn't suspend play and, eventually, the women's game faded into history.

The movie itself spawned several memorable lines, chief among them Jimmie Dugan's "no crying in baseball." My favorite: