What a night/day/life

Leonard Cohen

But I'm always alone.
And my heart is like ice.
And it's crowded and cold...


I cannot take credit for the words, but that is certainly how I feel right now.

Mirrors

Is there any object in the world ever created that is more damaging than a mirror?

When man first looked into a pool of water, he became aware of himself. Once that awareness became a part of his consciousness, vanity appeared. Vanity makes us love. Makes us hate. Makes us long. Makes us vain… a concept born out of simple vision. You look in a mirror and see everything you love and hate about yourself.

Numb

I read a short story the other day. It was called ________ ____ written by ______ _____. In it, a man does the thing that people do: he works, he gets married, and he works some more and yet there is unhappiness in him. Marriage does not make him happy nor does his divorce. He loses someone very close to him yet he struggles on into the growing numbness of his life.

Later on as he ages, he finds a kindred spirit who only wants the quietness that he has lead- no more, no less. He finds a happy medium that surprises him, yet still lacks the fulfillment that he does not know he has already. Again, tragedy strikes and he finds himself alone again in reflection of his life and loss. He has no financial burdens in retirement with investments well made, but nothing else to show his heart that life was, had been or could be okay for him. He just has the silence of the water and land around him to contemplate.

As I finished reading this, I wondered if this was all there was in life: a series of disappointments to make you wonder if it was worth it. More and more, I feel that this is exactly what life is like for many of us. We slave away at jobs we despise no matter the good or bad amounts of pay we receive in return. We date & marry people we don’t love and miss out on the ones you do. We rarely take time to smell the roses as they say. Nearly every one I know needs more time off after their week of vacation because it was an actual chore, yes A CHORE to be on vacation. My generation has loads of people my age still trying to figure out what they are going to do with their life- some of them still from the safe environs of their parent's house (and I’ve been there). How many of you can say you are truly happy or just bitter? I bet a good lot of you vote for the latter more than the former.

I am just like you ______ _____.

Jekyll

Just finished watching the series premiere of “Jekyll” on BBC America.

Brilliantly done.

James Nesbitt does a fantastic job at playing opposites: As Dr. Jackman, you can tell that there is something not right with him quickly and of course as the creepy, violent & devilishly wonderful Mr. Hyde, he keeps you on the edge of your seat every time he comes popping around to make a mess of things.

And those evil, black eyes…
something to give you nightmares.

Giving Barry His Due

After reading Rick Reilly's piece on Barry Bonds, I found myself torn:

torn between the tremendous amount of joy & laughter the column gave
me, and the sadness that I felt afterward when thinking about Hank
Aaron. As fans of American sports (our self-proclaimed National
Pastime), we've missed out on celebrating one of our greatest sports
heroes- maybe one of our greatest American heroes. Mr. Aaron never
was the Mr. Coffee ad man like Mickey Mantle nor was he loved publicly
like Mr. October- Reggie Jackson. Hank Aaron, in his time, was known
as the "black man" who broke a white man's seemingly unbreakable
record.

As a fan of baseball since childhood, I find myself at __ years of age
in awe of the accomplishments Mr. Aaron achieved on the field, yet I
know little of him as a person off the field. Everything I can read
about and see in interviews tells me what I need to know Hank Aaron as
a person: With dignity & seemingly insurmountable cultural & personal
odds, he achieved what was then unthinkable. Hank Aaron was human
and withstood personal affronts that is despicable & inexcusable in
our age of 24/7 media and so called advances in race relations.
Frankly, I am ashamed that it has taken over thirty years for our
society, which views sports achievement as an ultimate pantheon to
success to recognize Hank Aaron for the class act that he always was-
not to mention that he shatter a record that stood for DECADES.

Records are made to be broken and in this ho-hum chase of the only
baseball record that matters, I am saddened that Hank Aaron will have
to have the asterisk beside his tally of 755 just as Roger Maris did
with 61. With great effort, comes great sacrifice.

Barry, look in the mirror and tell us all what did you ever do to

justify your efforts- proven or not?

I watched it slip away

Oh how I realized, how I wanted time,
Put into perspective, tried so hard to find,
Just for one moment, thought I'd found my way.
Destiny unfolded, I watched it slip away.

Twenty Four Hours

Closer, 1980

Joy Division

Major League Baseball 2007 Predictions

Ok, I am a little late in posting my thoughts on what teams will end up where this year but it is early in the season so it should not matter. I am so glad baseball is back in full swing. I feel a bit lost when football ends because I do not follow the NBA or basketball in general (I do like the March Madness hoopla though).

The numbers in parenthesis are the playoff seeding order.

Baseball Rocks!

NL East

NY Mets (2)
Atlanta (4)
Philadelphia
Florida
Washington

NL Central

St. Louis (3)
Milwaukee
Houston
Chicago
Cincinnati
Pittsburgh

NL West

Los Angeles (1)
San Diego
Arizona
San Francisco
Colorado


AL East

Boston (3)
New York
Toronto
Baltimore
Tampa Bay

AL Central

Minnesota (1)
Detroit (4)
Chicago
Cleveland
Kansas City

AL West

Los Angeles (2)
Texas
Oakland
Seattle

NL Playoffs

Los Angeles over Atlanta (Wild card)
NY over St. Louis
NY over Los Angeles

AL Playoffs

Minnesota over Detroit (Wild card)
Los Angeles over Boston
Minnesota over Los Angeles

World Series

NY Mets over Minnesota Twins 5-1


NL MVP:
Carlos Beltran (NYM) 44 HR 129 RBI

NL Cy Young:
Derek Lowe (LAD) 21-5 2.89 ERA

NL Rookie of the Year:
Chris Young (AZ) .280 19 HR 74 RBI

AL MVP:
Mark Teixeira (Tex) .297 51 HR 136 RBI

AL Cy Young:
Justin Verlander (Det) 19-6 3.16 ERA

AL Rookie of the Year:
Alex Gordon (KC) .298 27 HR 88 RBI

Movie Tickets

While clearing off my desk of random paper and receipts this morning, I decided to take the plunge into the first drawer of my filing cabinet to empty it of paper that has cluttered it up for a few years. The main offender in question is movie tickets. I save them after I see a movie. I have hundreds since the late 90’s. They document my life, my taste, my friends, my girlfriends… everything. I was not ready to look into this darkness. Printed names on stubs… All About My Mother, Mostly Martha, Harry Potter… they fly at me and remind me what I am not and what I am. I will try not to be depressed.

Post Oscar Award Thoughts

This year was by far, the worst year I’ve had for Oscar predictions in quite some time. Only 13 right out of 24 does not sit well with me. I guess that is what happens when you don’t do your home work on all the smaller categories (which is usually where I clean up). Still, I did get all 4 acting categories correct (who couldn’t get at least 3 of them right this year with Hudson, Mirren & Whitaker already winning most of the previous award shows & critics polls).

Marty got the sympathy vote.

There, I said it and I think a lot of you out there might think the same thing. Of the five films nominated for Best Picture, I would rank it no higher than third or even fourth. Still, it is nice to see him get an award that should have been given to him twice before.

Helen Mirren gave the best acceptance speech of the night- elegant, reserved, respectful, charming & most of all gracious.

I hope Clint Eastwood really forgot his glasses up there when he was speaking of Ennio Morricone. He looked bad, sounded bad & I believe he knew it.

I liked how the presenters read the script dialogue when presenting the screenplay nominations.

I disliked how the Academy presented the best picture nominations. Please go back to a blurb about the film and then showing a scene from the movie. This was a big, big let down.

Again, the Academy botches up the acceptance speech timing ritual. Let these people speak! This after show speech/web cam thing is for the birds. The spontaneity is gone when you do it that way. Block the show out for 5 hours and be done with it!

Ellen did a great job hosting. I wish there had been more of her in the show.