The Daily News
1 So…Studs Terkel walks into a bar…
2 Author of among other things a book called Working, which I grabbed and read from cover to cover a few years ago.
3 It was one of those books you buy at a used book store for $1.79 and wind up reading cover to cover.
4 The basic plot was simply a chapter-by-chapter account of what different jobs are like.
5 You’d think that might be boring, but I thought it was really interesting, like a day in the life of everyone.
6 It was later turned into a Broadway musical, which I never did get out to see. I just remember the book, which is everything you need to know about life.
7 The trials and tribulations of everyone’s daily life as a concept alone is worthy of a Pulitzer.
8 Join Terkel’s writing with the musical expertise of among others the immortal Stephen Schwartz (Godspell, Wicked) and James Taylor and you have all the workings of a Broadway masterpiece. At least in an American sorta way. Sort of like The Godfather,Titanic, or Pepperidge Farm’s classic Milano cookies. Monstrously unartistic, yet in an American sort of way, quintessential American art.
9 Moving on: On Saturday I went online in order to get a jump on this morning’s DN and I came upon this article on AOL that told of some debris in outer space that was to crash into our atmosphere sometime yesterday.
10 Now today it’s nice to know that nobody got hurt, or even that the thing either landed or didn’t.
11 But on Saturday I became a bit alarmed.
12 AOL, in all it’s alarmist glory, informed us that at some time yesterday afternoon, 1400 pounds of NASA debris was going to crash into the planet.
13 Evidently some NASA astronauts thought that this stuff was too much for them to keep on board their mission and so they hurtled this 1,400-pound carton of toxic ammonia into space.
14 The carton was the size of a refrigerator, and NASA officials weren’t certain, but felt fairly certain that it would hit our atmosphere and dissintegrate.
15 If it was so innocent, then why was it even a story on AOL? And “fairly certain” doesn’t make it, if you ask me.
16 It sent me personally into hissy fits.
17 I figured that even if it DID make it through our atmosphere, that it would likely burn upon hitting fresh air.
18 I was okay, but when I began thinking of the odds of getting hit, I didn’t think at all about the odds, but about how many times I’ve been chosen to volunteer for things when I was trying to hide in a crowd.
19 I was the kind of guy that some clown at Pier 39 would be saying this to: “We need a volunteer to come down here and wear these bunny ears…” or, “Is there someone who has a good pal they’d like to see totally humiliated out there?”
20 Invevitably I’d be the guy these guys would choose, usually out of hundreds.
21 That being said, I assumed that a 1,400 pound refrigerator containing toxic ammonia would in all probability miss me completely and crash innocently into some ocean somewhere, presumably because 75% of the world is made up of water.
22 Unless you are me.
23 MY feeling was this: Consistently throughout my frabjous life I’ve been the guy who gets chosen to come to the stage.
24 Shortly after I saw the AOL piece on Saturday morning, I began goofing on myself getting hit by this NASA refridge. I walked outside, looked up through the morning rain droplets, and pictured this refrigerator breaking through the grey clouds and heading directly at me.
25 I assumed it would also probably be on fire, and that it would eclipse the sun, causing a supernatural shadow to descend directly over me.
26 Not only would the thing hit me, but it would also start me on fire, and that the fire would cause toxic ammonia to boil and burn everything within a two-mile diameter of where I was standing.
27 Thank goodness for exhaustion and sleep, resulting in a mid-morning lap and crossing into dreamland.
28 In classic AOL style, the refrigerator never hit, rendering the fearsome story irrelevant and useless. File under ALARMIST ALERTS 2008.
29 By the time I recovered from that paranoia, I was distressed that I hadn’t been able to do some important research for the DN. And yeah, getting hit by that refrigerator would have assured me bragging rights in the afterlife, but who wants that? I mean REALLY.
30 And I’ve just recovered from like about 1500 coincidences happened this weekend, and I’ve also become tired with all of it.
31 The radio just announced something about some chick named Heidi. No, but SERIOUSLY. Stuff HAS happened.
32 Okay, so for one thing I had discussed the famous Titanic references in the Heidi Chronz with my students. so yesterday I channel-surfed for the Raider game and came upon Titanic on teevee.
33 I actually LOVE that film, depsite all of it’s luster and boushit. It’s sorta like The Godfather to me. A whole bunch of it is glamour and boushit, but it still rocks, no matter how you look at it.
34 I KNOW, I KNOW.
35 I’ve officially been TOSed from the La-Dee-Dah Film Purists’ Club of America.
36 Ah, sue me.
37 Right back to it, I had spent the latter part of yesterday watching Titanic and enjoying it’s splendor and obvious idiocy. But the film proper overwhelmed my own cynicism to the point that I got drawn in by it’s luster.
38 …which I always manage to do.
39 After it was over, I took off for Walgreens, my usual destination following something brilliant.
40 As soon as I jumped into the TOOOOOONDRA, I turned on the radio. Some random voice blathered “And that was a Night to Remember…”
41 …which is the name of the only really serious film about the Titanic prior to James Cameron.
42 Or myself, but mine was never a film.
43 But myTitanic scene pre-dated James Cameron’s film by four years.
44 Sorry. We NEED those sorts of things in life, don’t we?
45 The only person who would even remotely care about that would be me, or MAYBE my mom.
46 But I still needed to thump my own chest. No IDEA why.
47 Yeesh.
48 Anyway, just another coincidence with the Heidi stuff. I guess that was the REAL relevance.
49 Ah, I don’t really care either. Abe Lincoln showed up a bilion times this weekend. I didn’t feel any of it was
newsworthy. But A Night to Remember seemed more real.
50 I did feel it newsworthy, in a Monday sorta way.
51 Fly low.
52 Peace.
~H~
41 …which is the name of the only really serious film about the Titanic prior to James Cameron.
