The Value of Taking a Walk/Monster Machines

For the majority of my life, I hated walking. I would win about having to walk. I would much prefer to ride my bike or take the car. Walk to the park? I'll just stay home. Walking seemed so slow and took so long.

Humanity had evolved past walking. We trained animals to let us ride them. We created new modes of transportation. We had bicycles and cars and scooters and skate boards and so much more. Why would any chose to walk. Walking a mile seemed like thumbing my nose at hundreds of years of ingenuity and evolution.

Then a few years ago, I left CHS Field in downtown St. Paul and started walking. I had just planned on getting out of the crowded downtown and the ride share services surge pricing after a Saints game. A couple blocks, check the pricing. Nope. Walk a couple more. Then at some point, I realized that I was maybe a third of the way home already. Maybe I should just walk. I even wrote a whole blog about it when I got home: I Took a Walk.

That walk changed my perspective some. But going without a car for 6 months in 2019 after totaling two vehicles in the span of 5 months was a seismic shift. I walked to the bus. I biked. I utilized ride share services. And on occasion I would just walk home from work. All the way. Walking a mile didn't seem so long anymore. Even 5 miles just took time, it wasn't a stress or even difficult.

It was during these walks that I started to realized how much I had been missing. Driving a car is a full sensory job. You have to be focused on the road, the signs, the signals, other cars, pedestrians, bikes, the condition of the road and a million other things. Noticing any thing else can be a danger to yourself, or to others.

But wow, you miss a lot. Landscapes fly by without a second look or a thought. Homes, buildings, how fast the leaves change. Today I dropped my car off to get the AC recharged. The service station was along the route I used to walk home. So instead of sitting inside or arranging a ride home, I decided to start walking home. Figured if it took a long time, I could make it home. If the fix was quick, I'd just turn around.

I got about a half mile away from the service location and there was a construction project for a new subdivision underway. In what was previously a heavily wooded lot, they were deforesting it as quickly as possible. Passing by in the car, I would probably not have given it a second look. Walking by, the machines were incredible.

One had an attachment that would grab onto a full tree as the blade at the base cut through it in seconds. It would lift 30 to 40 foot pieces and drop them. Another tractor would pick them up in its claw and drag them to what was seemingly the world's largest wood chipper. The chipper fed into a full semi trailer. It was efficient and honestly kind of terrifying.

Another bobcat looking machine had a saw blade that would have seemed more appropriate on the set of Mad Max than in suburbia. This smaller mechanical monster was roaming in the wake of the larger tree eater. The blade constantly spinning and grinding up anything that the tree eater had left behind. These machines, which looked like the characters from Bob the Builder got the Lovecraft treatment were decimating the former forest in an impressive and yet disturbing dance of efficiency.

It was a scene that is burned into my mind. Even now, nearly 8 hours later, it stands out and I am transfixed. I decided to drive by this afternoon. The mechanical monsters are gone. The field looks almost naturally barren. There is no indication that those giant Snorts did this. Just a sign foretelling of condos and town homes in the 300s coming soon.

Is this the weirdly comforting and yet perverse modern cycle of life? That land was barely used, in a first tier suburb, it was likely simply a matter of time. Yet if I hadn't been walking by, the sheer force of the change, the mechanical monsters would be unknown to me.

The Fortress of Solitude.

In 1995 my parents built a house. They let me choose which bedroom I wanted of the three upstairs. I choose the smallest one, because I was convinced that I would eventually move to the one in the basement.

The basement was called The Fortress of Solitude among my friends. It was the scene of countless sleepovers, games of pool, movie marathons and hours and hours spent playing Legos. There is no doubt that of all the hours I spent in that house in the past 25 years, the vast majority of them where spent in the basement.

It was a versatile place. The summer I was dumped for the first time, I cried and listened to Paul Simon's Like a Rock album on repeat - the basement was my safe space. It served as the sound stage and film studio for so many home made epics, like the Storming of the Bastille. It was a killing field of a war zone during the Lego-GI Joe-Playmobile conflicts of the late 90s. It was there at my surprise 18th birthday party took place.

Even after I moved out in college, the basement was still my space. When I would return home, it was where I would go. Every party thrown in that house had parents upstairs and kids in the basement. The basement was always there.

I finally got to move into the basement bedroom in the two months after I got married. The basement was our first apartment. I even got to finally paint the room to a blue that I chose. I moved away to Boston and then to Kentucky and then back. When my marriage ended the basement was there as a nursery and home for my kids and their Mom. My son went through a period where he would fight bed time with all of his might. So many evenings walking around that pool table, singing to him as he tried to cry himself to sleep.

The Lego table returned and my kids played on it then. The Fisher Price castle that had been the set for the Bastille became a castle again. The storage area turned into a kitchenette. My kids played in the shower that once was the preferred after soccer practice locker room. They moved out and the basement waited once again.

In 2008, my financial house of cards collapsed. I got laid off. I was in so much debt. I got dumped. I returned to the basement again. The bedroom was set up with two bunk beds for the kids and a twin bed for me. The little TV that hung in the corner had a VCR. We watched so many movies before bed, Disney classics, Star Wars and more. I set up my computer as a wine rack and searched for jobs. I "cooked" us meals in the kitchenette. We played so much pool.

Again, I moved away and the basement returned to the place I would go when I visited. Each of my children got to have sleepovers there with their friends. They both wanted one more this summer but Covid took that possibility away.

Today, I moved the pool table out of the basement. The house is devoid of most furniture. What is left was put here by the home stager for photos. The house has been sold.

Today I stood in my safe space and cried. Tears of pain. Tears of happiness. So much. Memories. Ghosts and visions hang in every inch of that basement. So many times that basement was there for me, my family, my children.

The basement was always a way that my parents could show me they loved me. It was always there as a refuge. From the dreams of pretend, Legos and camcorder movies. It created safety for a broken hearted teen, foolish newlyweds, broken hearts again. It was there - all the way through to the laughter of my kids and their friends.

I cried for the last time in my safe space today. It is empty. Soon another family will fill it with their own memories. The Fortress of Solitude will now belong to someone else.

Those Eyes

I read or heard or imagined a quote once that eyes where the window the soul. Maybe I took it too much to heart. But those eyes have always opened the door to my heart.

At first maybe it was the challenge in them at recess, a glint of competition at the four square field. Or maybe later at the middle school camp when truth or dare seemed the most dangerous game that could be played.

Later those eyes were wide and innocent within a theater production, I was tasked to ask them to put on a happy face, to shake off the gray skies. And I desperately wanted to make them happy. Through life and misfortune, I wanted to make those eyes smile, even if i couldn't fix the reality of life and death and burdens too heavy for most teenagers.

Then they were eyes that were focused on the future, on results, on potential on anything but what was in front of them in their last semester. I wanted those eyes on me, to see me so much. I hijacked the plan those eyes had. And in the end, didn't live up to the promises my eyes had made.

A read through isn't supposed to change a life. It's but words fumbled through with rarely any connection. Yet I found those eyes in that first ready through and I couldn't escape the connection. A read through is the first run through of living someone else's truth through your own lips. But in that moment I found an accidental, unavoidable truth.

Eyes maybe the window to the soul. But that soul in my experience is my own, I have learned so much about myself from falling into the depths of another's eyes.

Love, pain, confusion, lust, terror, trust, disappointment and hope. What I saw in each of those eyes will never leave me and in a way I will never truly understand what I saw.

Haywire. Why wasn't this movie a hit?

Some times I don't understand the world. Well, truth be admitted, I rarely understand the world. I'm not even talking about pandemics or the arrogance of those who deny it's existence or even that this is the probable endgame for years of denying that science is science about so many things. When you the village there will never be a wolf, when a wolf arrives, they assume it's a mirage? Mixed metaphors or not. This is not about science or pandemics or even wolves.

What this is about is how a movie that seemingly had everything going for it, wasn't a hit. The year was 2011, a viral sensation and action sports/MMA star, Gina Carano, made the seemingly brilliant choice to wait for her debut film role, Haywire.

She could have easily taken a check for a wink wink action movie that was big on stunts, involved MMA  moves and followed in the footsteps of so many sports to movie transitions. A reboot of Bloodsport? Easy. A female slanted Rambo or Rocky? Meh. Instead, she found something completely different.

Stephen Sodenbergh after Erin Brocovich, Traffic and the entire Ocean's thievery trilogy, with a cast to die for and a fairly clever script. Built around Carano's persona, athleticism, charisma and visual presence. It should have been tossing gasoline on a bonfire. Epic, explosive and eye catching.

Just look at the cast. Carano as a first time actress is the only perceivable question mark. Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, an impossibly young Channing Tatum, Michael Douglas, Bill Paxton and Antonio Banderas.

The script does an excellent job of letting visuals and silence tell the story as much as the spoken word. Carano plays an ex-marine now global security specialist who basically functions as a spy. Sodenbergh gives the entire film a nouvelle-noir film. Yes this is an action movie. The stunts and fight scenes are spectacularly filmed. But it's a caper, a heist, a spy film and an action movie all rolled into one.

The script allows so many of the characters and by extension, the performers to thrive. McGregor has always had a very easy bad guy vibe. Especially if there was subterfugue to be involved. Banderas plays the committed government man with questionable side with charm and easily creates doubts. Tatum plays a combo bad boy, eye candy and boy scout. Douglas plays the political figure that you easily could believe is evil or good or just a political figure. Fassbender, it a morally ambiguous agent who looks dashingly handsome but is underwhelming.

Even Bill Paxton plays her father, a spy novelist with a weird mustache and back story that only he could make seem reasonable. It is interesting that his character is the complete opposite of "There in the fucking wall man!" from Aliens. Playing against type?

Soderbergh uses silence so well in the film. It creates tension, makes the action scenes pop even more and not once, not even for a moment, does Carano utter or even seem to be about to utter a one liner upon defeat of the enemy. The vast majority of fight scenes end in silence, in seeming contemplation.

Haywire hardly made any money. Carano never became the next great female action star and her career has not gone to the level I might have expected. However, her excellent turn as the aging and reluctant freedom fighter in The Mandelorian has been a very welcome back to relevance. As an action movie fan, I feel we missed out on a decade of potential.

I am glad that she's found her way back into the mainstream with The Mandelorian. But we'll always have Haywire as an ode to what she could have been and what action movies should aspire to be. Clever, beautifully shot. Leave the dialogue to the villains and never forget to use silence as a character itself.

Quarantine Spoiler Movie Review: Money Train (1995) or White Man Can't Rob Trains Either

In this time of quarantine and boredom, I am diving into some dark corners of the streaming universe. Tonight as I scrolled through the 1995 Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson and Jennifer Lopez classic, Money Train. A couple years after the cultural impact and success of White Men Can't Jump, Hollywood looked to cash in on the Wesley/Woody chemistry that led to such incredible box office success. There is a line about lighting striking twice. Short story, it rarely does. This review is going to ruin the movie, so you don't fall in to the trap I did. Remembering that I saw it or at least wanted to see it as a kid and wasting any precious quarantine time on this forgettable gem from the mid 90s.

Somehow, a movie that takes place on basically subway trains, cost nearly $68 million to produce. White Men Can't Jump cost less than 31 million. It grossed more than 90 million dollars at the box office. It shouldn't be shocking that Hollywood dreamed of a blockbuster return from this crime caper.

Woody and Wesley play cop versions of their White Men characters. Basically adding bad action, trains and some classic 90s action move dialogue. In one of her first movie roles, Jennifer Lopez inhabits the Rosie Perez character. But add the fact that she is the token, hard edge by the book cop. Robert Blake plays one of the more over the top racist action movie characters of the 90s. He also has the pleasure of delivering some absolutely terrible dialogue.

Woody and Wesley retain some of the chemistry from White Men and they have some fun scenes of quick and clever dialogue. But the real sparks fly between Snipes and Lopez. In a very silly movie, their connection is one of the few plausible events. They dance and then they box. It becomes a seemingly believable connection. 

Woody plays the screw up well. First he gambles himself into debt, then when his brother gives him is life savings, he loses it trying to stop a mugging. There is some odd visual juxtaposition of Woody's character getting beaten up while Snipes and Lopez make love. It's as one of my college theater professors would say a sledgehammer moment. Driving a wedge between these two brothers and partners. This drives them apart. Woody into despair and out into the literal cold. 

One bright spot of this movie is Chris Cooper in a small but actually pretty interesting arsonist, psychopath called the Torch. Cooper is an all time character actor and was still a year away from his critical breakthrough in Lone Star and several years away from his huge performance in American Beauty. His unsettling turn as Torch gives the movie some needed tension every time he shows up. A movie that focused less on the stars banter and more them determining this psychopath's motive and modus operandi would have been a much more interesting script. 

The take down of the Torch leads to the classic action movie trope of the hero cops losing their badges. You couldn't make an action movie after 1985 without a mismatched hero duo, a boss who screamed and someone losing their badge.

Oh and a bad guy threatening the innocent to put our hero or heroes in an seemingly impossible situation. For Woody, that means his gambling debt must be paid by New Year's Day or they will kill Wesley. 

Threatened with the death of his brother, Cain decides to rob the money train to save the life of Able. I'm not bothering to use actual character names because it doesn't feel like either actor or the script spent much time crafting a character. But there are more than a few echos of the age old tale of sibling rivalry.

In terms of action fun, Wesley running through the restaurant beating the living hell out of the bad guys is cathartic fun. It is legitimately the only segment of the movie not involving Lopez that Snipes looks like he is having a good time. For a moment we get to see the Wesley from Passenger 57 and Demolition Man and a glimpse of the future in Blade. 

The movie picks up when the heist is finally set into motion. Woody/Cain's plan is flawed. It doesn't go as planned. Wesley swarms in to rescue his brother, and joins the ill fated heist. As an audience member, beside the fact that Robert Blake's character is abhorrent, why should we be rooting for our heroes in this caper? It is poorly step up. Until. Robert Blake goes full evil. 

He puts a passenger train in front of the runaway Money Train. Literally echoing the trolley car dilemma. Or in a shockingly unexpected metaphor to the current government crisis, what is the acceptable death toil to keep the money system rolling as expected. 

I did not expect to stumble upon a metaphor or our current situation but art is a crafty rogue sometimes. 

Wesley and Woody ignore the probable laws of physics to create a rudementary lever of sorts, which stops the runway Money Train, and launches them safely onto the previously doomed passenger train. They emerge, action movie barely scratched just in time to punch Robert Blake and watch as Jennifer Lopez arrests him for endangering the passenger train. She is cheered on by one of my favorite unknown actors, Bill Nunn, as the endangered train conductor. Nunn appeared has 71 credits on IMDB.com and I bet you'd recognize him and not be sure where from. For me, I saw him roughly twice a week during childhood as the detective trying to protect Whoopi in Sister Act. 

Money Train isn't the worst action movie of the 90s and I have seen most of them. It slogs through too much attempt at witty dialogue and wastes Lopez in a stereotypical role. But the once the heist gets rolling. In terms of train movies, it lags behind both versions of the Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Unstoppable and has nothing more than a train in common with Snowpiercer but it is not the worst thing I have seen during quarantine. 

The trolley problem that I mentioned earlier connects with our current social situation. Mashable did some work to breakdown the connections in their article here. It is not a perfect comparison and certainly Money Train took the concept and used it to define the hero and the villains of the story. But I'm sure reality won't have as neat an ending. And I really hope it doesn't take until New Years Eve either. 

The trolley problem solution also pops up in a famous quote from Star Trek, both in the original movies and the JJ Abrams re-imaginings. Hopefully the nerds can lead us through our current crisis as well.

All of My Social Coping Mechanisms have Collapsed. But I still have my dog.

There have to be one million "First Day of Quarantine/Social Distancing" blogs. So why not one more. I worked as much as I could yesterday, from open to close (limited as it was) at the restaurant. A place it took me 12 years to get hired in. I returned to the industry when I asked the GM years ago how I could someday be a part of that place. She said, well you need recent experience, the next week I begged a friend for a reference at Champps and was back in. But it took years and even burning out and leaving the industry again to earn a spot at my chosen place.

I am a nearly 40 year old divorced white male. The vast majority of my friendships come from my workplace, my hobbies and my common retail and service locations. I am what you would potentially call a regular. I value seeing people I trust, sharing minimal amounts of detail and if being truly honest, being remembered.

I worked at the visual location of Cheers in Boston for nearly three years and often in the gift shop, where I spent most of my time, people would walk in and ask me if I knew there name. Of course, I didn't know every tourists name and learned not to guess. But the power of someone knowing your name, your drink, your favorite meal is really something that people underestimate. In in opinion the worst thing that can happen is to be forgotten. Apathy is so much worse than hate. Then it seems logical that being remembered is close to heavenly.

Which means that right now, I am in hell. My social coping mechanisms of restaurants and bars, cigar shops and even delivery places is all broken. I love to watch movies but the theaters are closed. I have enjoyed swimming even though I am the youngest at the mid-day lap swim by 20 years and yet still get lapped. But the community center is closed. I served at my place for one last time yesterday and I spent half the shift biting my lip so I wouldn't tear up.

Acquaintances, coworkers, friends all came in. And I knew that I wouldn't see them for weeks or who knows maybe more. People who would smile when they see me, ask about my family, support me as teammates. I've been to these people's weddings, birthdays. I've shared my struggles and they have shared theirs with me. Now we all have to hit pause.

I just hope it's not stop. I am a horrible communicator. I do not share information or feelings well. If I do, in person it is more likely and then maybe some ill written texts when I get too close to the breaking point.

Many of the familiar faces I know, whom I have learned about over the past decade, I do not actually have much contact information for. Many I do. But historically, I am a bad "first contact" type of person. So I worry that I will not connect with so many over the next days, weeks and maybe months.

And then there is being the father of teenagers, who are going through all their own stuff. My daughter recently got cast in a play in a city 30 min drive away from home and I couldn't have been happier. Multiple 30 min drives with my kids in the car, sharing their music choices and reacting the world, having conversations and learning about them? Pure heaven. I will hate this virus for a lot of things, but nothing so much as taking those car rides and shared experiences away from me.

Today I didn't know what to do with myself. No work. No kid events. A directive to stay inside. Avoid contact. For the good of others. I made it roughly 15 hours before I just drove to get gas so I could see humans. I live alone. And social distancing has reminded me just how alone that really is. It is going to be hard and I'm worried I will shrink back, not contact people and likely as is my way when I am scared, push people away. I don't want to. But history has a lot of reminders of what I have done and am likely to do again.

Though all this is my dog. My rescue mutt who has been used to me being gone during the day. When I am home she patrols, sniffs, does recognizance and general protects me from squirrels, random joggers and the mail person. Yet today she has been on the clock for nearly 24 hours. Understandably she is exhausted and seemingly a bit confused. I went outside and sat in my car for 30 min so she would take a break. But I'm not sure she really relaxed. She never saw or heard me drive away so I think she was on to me.

I fear losing my acquaintances. My friends. My coworkers. I fear what isolation will potentially allow my depression and anxiety to assume. I know there will be assumptions and I know that they are simply that. But isolation, idleness and depression can form a persuasive trio when there is little other evidence.

Which is why dogs may be the one thing that saves us during all of this. Lorelei is always there, always protecting, always close. Which I couldn't need more now than ever before.

The Memories we keep locked away and unlock accidentally.

I haven't been full time server or bartender in 6 years. But when I was I had a server book that I used every shift. Tomorrow, or later today rather, I will beginning training for a server/bartender shift.

It's the shift I wanted 11 years ago. That led me to apply other places, burn out, try the corporate world, burn out again and then ironically, find my way back to the service industry for shifts that I long ago desired.

I was ready for bed but the impulse to find my old server book was strong. It had a picture of my kids as basically infants, it had stickers I had earned, it was covered in tape. It had seen the dark side of the serving world and had survived. Like any retired knight headed back into battle, I wanted my trusted tool to be with me.

I didn't find it.

However, I did do the thing that I dread most. I let memories and mementos out of their boxes. I have always been a collector. A keeper of things that had special significance. In high school I was teased for having a shadow box of things on the wall in my room. I had boxes and boxes of memories and moments stashed away in the basement. At the end of most school years I would empty my bag and locker into a box and set it on the self for historical preservation. In the chance I had a presidential or famous person library, I had saved the genius of each of my scholastic achievements in a box. Easily set up for display.

While this may have seemed very forward thinking for a grade school aged child, in hindsight it was also super egotistical and narcissistic. And that hubris played into tonight's lack of sleep.

I went looking for this server book. Probably long discarded. And I found years of memories, moments, and terrors instead.

A trophy from grade school baseball? I found two. Evidence of former lovers? How about an engagement ring, a pair of earnings, a box full of pictures and even the love notes from freshman year of high school.

Interested in out of date technology? I found 7 different phones. 2 external hard drives. A box of unused 3.5 inch disks ready for late 90s term papers. I found cds a plenty, a musical black hole that I have fallen down with enthusiasm.

The first Ken doll that was based off of Captain Kirk? Yep. But out of the package. The first Macfarlane Toys Kevin Garnett figure? Yep. In the case and close to mint. Look out kids college fund!

Boxes and boxes of paperwork, papers, note books, diaries. Hopes and dreams in horrible handwriting. A thousand sketches of the same crystalline object. Some really horrible emo white boy poetry.

We used to print photos. Before we had a computer in our pocket. I found albums and albums. Theater productions in Boston and Kentucky. An impossible young me in Twelfth Night in Concord MA. All the photos from theater in Kentucky, photos of me on stage, playing someone else because I couldn't be myself day to day. An album of kid photos from the 7 months I was separated from them by states and hours and ego. That brought the tears.

Once the tears started, they didn't really stop until I dried up. Boxes and boxes of history. Of what if. Of things that I loved, moments of people I loved, lost or drove away. Trophies that meant so much in a moment in time, like the stupid bowling trophy that one cast gave me or the nearly complete series of Blacklash comics from 1995-1997.

I didn't find the server book. But like an anthropologist who all too eagerly opens a sarcophagus, I find so many ghosts. I don't know if I'm ok or not but man, ghosts are so real. They just hide in your head until the right trigger.

I guess I'll get a new server book. With new stickers. With a new picture of the kids.

For this new adventure. And I'll ask the ghosts to stay in the basement like Harry in Harry and the Hendersons. That works. For a while.