Thunderbolts and Madness

There is a scene in The Godfather when Michael Corleone, hiding out in Sicily after killing Sollozzo at Louis' Italian American restaurant, first sees his future wife. He is overcome. The guys with him start to give him a hard time, telling him that he has been struck by the thunderbolt. The thunderbolt hits when a man is struck dumb and weak in the knees at the sight of a woman.

Over Thanksgiving this year, I was struck by the thunderbolt. It had been over three weeks since I had seen my wife. This was the longest separation in our marriage. She came home for the holiday from serving our country and our new president. She walked in the house and the family rushed to the front door to greet her. When I saw her, I went weak in the knees and felt like someone had punched me in the gut. I could not believe how incredibly beautiful she was. Strangely, I was also hit by regret and longing. It was the longing you feel when you look at an incredibly blue sky or perfectly still lake and want that moment to last forever, to embrace and own and devour it so that you can keep it and recall it whenever you want so that this intense feeling is yours to control. But you can't.

One of the lines from A Winter's Tale that has always stuck with me is that "To be mad is to feel with sadness and joy the intensity of a time which has already been or has not yet arrived." I looked at my wife, was struck by the thunderbolt, and felt I must be mad, lost in emotions and feelings and thoughts I had not experienced in over twenty years.

Maybe these are the feelings I felt when I was in Detroit in 1985 and saw her for the first time. Too much time has passed for me to remember. I hope they are - but if they are, they must mean I am losing my mind. Feeling with intensity a time which has already been. Lost in the feelings of the past and feeling them with intensity now, hoping now as an older man that I can bring these feelings back at will, but also knowing they come at unexpected unplanned moments over which I have no control. Happy to have felt them again, so painful, so exquisite, so unbidden, so intense. And fleeting, uncontrollable. Madness.

Dope

Jon Stewart made a public service announcement last night. After Rod goes to jail, we will have seen 50% of the last eight Illinois governors go to jail. 48% of murderers end up doing any time.

So kids, if you are trying to choose between becoming Governor or Illinois or a murderer, please keep the above statistics in mind.

Happy Together

“I’ve got this thing,” Mr. Blagojevich said on one tape, according to the affidavit, “and it’s [expletive] golden. And I’m just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing. I’m not going to do it. And I can always use it. I can parachute me there.”

Mr. Blagojevich (pronounced bluh-GOY-uh-vich), a Democrat, was arrested at his home at dawn Tuesday on charges of conspiracy and soliciting bribes. A lawyer for the governor said he denied any wrongdoing.

People who live outside of Chicago, or Illinois, probably have a hard time appreciating the anger and joy we feel at this development. Blago (as we affectionately call him) has been under investigation for three years. Everyone knew he was a scumbag. What we didn't know is how incredibly stupid and/or narcissistic he is.

Would you, knowing the feds have been after you for three years, then go on to try to sell the President-elect's Senate seat to one of his closest friends? One of my colleagues said that Blago regularly walked around the office talking about how he would be the next President of the U.S. This is how we define narcissism. Blago was so taken with himself that he could not see how any of us would view his behavior as anything other than corrupt.

I have a hard time deciding whether he embodies pure stupidity or evil. Hannah Arendt had the right term for him - "The Banality of Evil."

I suppose we in Illinois are fortunate that the worst this Governor did is line his own pockets. Our last Governor's actions, in selling licenses to unqualified truckdrivers, led directly to the deaths of six children of a minister. An unqualified driver using a license Ryan allowed him to buy ran into a minivan and killed 6 of 8 children of a pastor and his wife. Truly evil. Blago was just selling favors. But it gives you an appreciation of the banal behavior that can lead to truly evil outcomes.

Ryan and Blagojevich let the people of Illinois down, they have taken actions which have led to the deaths of innocents, and they have shown themselves to be beneath pity and sympathy. Hell was invented for men like them. I hope they are happy together. In Hell.

And for the six children killed by Ryan's greed, and the countless of other Illinois citizens who have suffered for their banality, please know that in electing Barack Obama Senator four years ago, we showed America we are not stupid. We want to believe in Hope, and Greatness, and the best of what this country has to offer. But we have been deceived, twice in six years. Let us hope we have the wisdom to take the higher road when next given the chance.

The Advent Conspiracy

A good friend of mine had this video posted on her blog. It is so compelling, I have to share it.

I hope to spend my Christmas taking lots of long walks with my family and making lots of yummy food in a toasty warm kitchen surrounded by the smells of cookies baking and turkeys roasting and coffee brewing.

Baby, You Can Drive My Car

This is the Foster Avenue exit from Lake Shore Drive in January 1967. You can find the story at the Tribune here: TribPhoto

I'm a Loser

I watched a TV show called "The 10 Worst Football Teams of All Time" today. I was looking for a diversion from studying and paper-writing.

Number five on the list was the 1968 Philadelphia Eagles. I found myself transported back to my childhood.

Children start developing conscious memories they retain into adulthood around age three or four. These tend to be random and when recalled are like grainy video with scenes missing. By the time I turned seven, however, the video was high def. And my passion was the Philadelphia Eagles.

My father spent many Sunday afternoons either watching football games on TV or listening to them while raking leaves in the back yard or doing other chores around the house. As an seven year old boy eager to connect with my father, I decided to follow our hometown team. I had learned to read that year, and I now had a consciousness capable of following from week to week the events on the field. With each Sunday's game and each Monday morning's sports section, I experienced misery and tears.

The Eagles lost their first eleven games. They were a miserable team.

Several things stand out in my memory; many others were forgotten until the TV show. I remember developing a hatred for Joe Kuharich, the Eagles' head coach. Even as a seven year old, I knew he was incompetent. He also mangled the language, a sin I have a hard time forgiving as an adult. I don't remember how I felt as a child. Explaining during a press conference why the team looked so different in the first and second halves of the game, Joe said "Well, we had a horse from a different firehouse in the second half."

What I didn't remember is that fans hated Kuharich so much that he received death threats during the season. The Philadelphia police ringed the stadium and stood on the roof of Franklin Field looking for snipers. Players refused to sit or stand close to Joe when on the sidelines. They worried the assassin might be a bad shot.

The only redeeming aspect of the season was the potential that the Eagles would perform poorly enough to get the first-round draft pick and gain a star for the next season. Of course, the Eagles went on to win the next two games, blowing their chance at the top pick. Eagles fans were so angry, they booed Santa Claus when he appeared on the field in the game before Christmas. To this day, people talk about Philadelphia fans as so mean that they would boo Santa Claus. What the reports fail to mention is that Santa was clearly drunk. He meandered around midfield and almost lost his footing several times before he was yanked off the field.

Oh, and the player the Eagles lost out on in the draft? OJ Simpson. OJ would go on to become a dominant running back in the NFL before being acquitted of murdering his wife. Of course, OJ would then go on to participate in a spectacularly stupid robbery attempt. He was sentenced to 9 - 34 years in prison today.

I wonder how all of these events shaped my young tender psyche. Certainly, when friends ask me why I root for the Bears and am not a bigger Eagles fan, I flinch reflexively at the memory of that 1968 Eagles season. It is fitting that one of the players on that team was Mike Ditka. Ditka hated Kuharich, too. I consider Ditka my football redeemer. Ditka was the coach of the Chicago Bears in that magical 1985 season, when the Bears went to the Super Bowl and I watched each game on the couch in the apartment of my new girlfriend-to-become-wife.

I know it's just a game. Today, football is a pleasant distraction. For a seven year old boy desperate to connect with and impress his father, football was a lifeline. That is, until it turned into a toxic mix of murder, drunkeness, incompetence and hopelessness. As I learned, though, these are the characteristics of all Philadelphia sports fans. It is the only NFL team in the league that has a prison in the stadium so that unruly fans can be sentenced and jailed during the game.

My early Philadelphia fandom prepared me well for my current vocation as a Cubs fan. Without the threats of assassination.