On Facing Fears, Creeps, and The Dead

I can't remember when I first became aware that "Night of the Living Dead" existed. I guess to me it's always been there, black and white and archaic, sporadically appearing on late-night TV channels past my bedtime -- its low-budget feel and library stock footage soundtrack making it seem just a little bit off, like an unnarrated documentary from some obscure public-access station from who knows where. It wasn't until the 1990 remake version similarly started popping up during late-night channel-surfing sessions in my teen years that the movie began to occupy a specific place in my mind.

It was, no doubt, the visual impact of the zombies that did it for me. Whereas the original is atmosphere first, appearance second, when you watch the remake you can't help but be simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by what advances in makeup over the years have produced from a visual standpoint. Those zombies are pretty dang scary on their own, hideous and menacing in a way the original version isn't.

I always had a big imagination as a kid. Part of that imagination was that I was afraid of everything. Not in a whimpering, crying way, like a kid who runs from the vacuum cleaner, but more in an inward, psychologically tormented way. I was afraid of things I saw in books or on TV. Pictures in fairy tale books, episodes of "Fantasy Island", even a trademark symbol in a children's reading book used to scare me. Not always immediately, but often later, after I had already looked at them, when the image of whatever I had looked at hours or days before would suddenly reappear in my head, amplified and elaborated upon by unknown forces in my brain, haunting me. It was mainly at night when I suffered, when Mom and Dad were asleep, the lights were off, and I was lying in silence -- but not sleep -- in my bed. Oh the bleak, unspeakable things I imagined under the bed, in the closet, lurking nearby in the blackness. All I could do was lie there, perfectly motionless, my head covered, waiting for morning.

As I got older I started to develop the paradoxical human impulse of actively seeking out fear. Sure those ghost books at the library were scary, but darn it if they weren't fun to read. But the books that seemed pleasantly creepy during the daytime, when I sat on the couch reading them in the sunlight with Mom, turned sinister at night, when I was by myself in the darkness. I couldn't bear to even have them in the room with me, scared that I would look over and find them open to a certain picture and Mom and Dad and the daylight wouldn't be there to save me from whatever nameless horror would come next.

"Creepshow" was one of those movies that HBO played frequently in the early 80s. I considered myself fortunate to be flipping channels and come across it. That is, until I had to go to bed afterwards. I think that movie was designed in a laboratory to scare kids...the music, the tone, the dark humor. It's based on comic books for crying out loud. Within the first few minutes the framing story of the movie has established that the monsters you read about in books are real. It's also an anthology, meaning five separate episodes to give you nightmares forever. I loved it.

I can remember turning my head during the scary parts, waiting for the doom-laden piano chords and screaming to stop before I dared look at the screen again. Sometimes, when I felt brave, I snuck a peek. I always regretted it.

So you take an impressionable kid and the right kind of horror movie and you get something both beautiful and terrible, attractive and repulsive. Maybe it's the age I saw it. Maybe it's the movie itself. It's most likely both, and "Creepshow" remains to this day one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. I've only watched it in its entirety a couple of times since those days on HBO circa 1984, but the old magic is still there. The reason I haven't watched it more often is that it's on my informal list of what I consider to be "movies of significant personal historical importance". I prefer to keep such movies hermetically sealed in my mind, remembering them as they were, not as they may be interpreted when I watch them now. Those ghosts are best left alone.

But like always, when it comes to horror movies I can't leave well enough alone.  So when I heard that the main attraction at ScareFest 8 in Lexington was none other than George A. Romero, Father of the Modern Zombie Genre, I knew I had to be there.

We made it to the convention center, parked, and followed the signs once we got inside.  The "Night of the Living Dead Q & A" session was set to begin at 12:30, so we only had minutes to spare.  We moved quickly through the entrance ticket checkpoint and went into the convention hall proper.  There were people everywhere, naturally most of the nerdy / weird type, including not a few of them in various ghastly costume.  I looked at the signs on the meeting rooms, trying to see something about where we needed to be, but without success.  Finally I consulted the convention program booklet they had handed us when we entered.  A few pages flipped and I saw what I needed to know: Thoroughbred Ballroom (3rd Floor).  The parenthetical part was what would doom us, it appeared.  We were some distance from any apparent access to this third floor, and the wide expanse of a convention hall crowded with some thousand people stood between us from any beginning of finding it. 

And so we began to slice and dice through the crowd, fighting back toward the entrance.  At one point I found myself face-to-face with one of the gruesomely made-up undead dancers, fresh off an absolutely riveting performance of "Thriller" on a stage setup nearby as we walked in.  I dodged her and her bloody Victorian ensemble and continued on.  At another, my path was frustratingly blocked by someone having his picture taken posing with one of the countless "evil clowns" that seemed to be everywhere.  Eventually I saw daylight and switched on the afterburners, turning to make sure Emily was still trailing diligently behind in her three-inch heel boots I had tried to discourage her from wearing. 

When I re-set my gaze forward, the sudden realization of what I saw has to rank with one of the most surreal experiences of my life: there, walking just a few feet in front of me, was the Godfather of the Dead himself.  George Andrew Romero.  The man from whose mind sprang the source of countless hours of lost sleep over my lifetime, at later ages than I care to admit.

All I could see was his back, of course; he was walking in the same direction we were.  But his long, thick silver hair (pulled back into a ponytail), his trademark vest, and his height made him instantly recognizable.  He was flanked by a younger, bald guy, trendily dressed, whom I assumed to be his agent (and who may be the same guy who represents Malcolm McDowell, if I remember correctly), and two guys with "security" t-shirts on.  This fortuitous, dream-like scenario not only told me that we weren't late, it also presented a direct line to this mysterious Thoroughbred Ballroom. 

So we tailed Mr. Romero and his small entourage, making sure to keep a tasteful distance so as not to arouse any sort of "obsessive fan" suspicions.  The people who passed by from the other direction seemed to pay him no mind, save for a smattering of sudden "is that really him?" stares.  As the group walked into the food court area, the crowd began to thin and it became more difficult for us to maintain our cover.  As soon as it became apparent that they were taking the elevator up to the third floor, we broke off our pursuit and darted quickly up the stairs.

There were the "Thoroughbred Ballroom" signs.  The hallways were pretty much deserted but I soon spotted a large room.  I could see through the open doorway that it was full of people sitting in chairs.  A group of seven or eight people were standing outside the door, each of them clad in yellow "staph" (har har) t-shirts.  I approached, somewhat apprehensive about our being admitted.  "Are you here for Mr. Romero?" one of them asked.  "Yes," I said, nodding hopefully.  "Come on in," he told us.  "Have a seat anywhere except the first five rows in the middle section, and no photography of any kind". 

We sat on the outside of the left-hand section, about four rows back.  The seats were mostly filled...maybe a hundred people.  The first five rows of the middle section were reserved for "platinum" ticket holders.  A minute or two later, Romero's arrival was announced, and he entered to a standing ovation from the same rear door as we had.  He took a seat at the table on the stage, next to a rotund bearded guy who was apparently some sort of MC.  The first few minutes of the discussion was the MC asking questions about -- despite the title of the event -- things that weren't "Night of the Living Dead".  Other movies and projects and such.  Actually "Night of the Living Dead" came up little if at all.  After that they opened the floor up to questions from the audience.  This breathed new energy into the proceedings, mostly via the whole "trainwreck" angle of worrying that somebody was going to be overly obsequious or otherwise embarrassing in their open mike time.  Mercifully everybody did fine, even drawing out a few insightful moments.  Some of the stuff I already knew about -- Romero's early inspiration from his favorite movie, "The Tales of Hoffmann", for example -- and some I didn't, like a surprisingly dark unfinished early 80s-era Disney project with Martin ("Marty", he called him) Scorsese about the recently dead being given one last chance at redemption (provided they can resist the temptations of a "demonic imp" sent up from Hades) set against the backdrop of a phantom hotel.  There were several such wistful "what might have been" anecdotes dealing with projects that were given to other directors or never produced at all (Pet Sematary, The Stand, Salem's Lot, The Mummy), each mention met with a collective "ooh!" from the audience that was equal parts excited and remorseful.  Somebody asked him which superhero movie he would like to make if he had a chance.  "It's already been done," he said.  "But it would be Batman.  I would make that thing dark!".  This brought applause and giddy laughter from the crowd at just the thought of it. 

Other questions included his favorite non-Romero zombie project ("Shaun of the Dead"), his advice for aspiring filmmakers ("don't pitch ideas, shoot film"), his take on the current state of horror movies ("Brad Pitt ruined it", i.e. CGI-filled big-budget blockbusters like "World War Z" take precedence over the more nuanced social commentary / satire Romero himself is known for), the requisite obscure film reference ("where did you get the idea for Knightriders?") , what contemporary social issue would he satirize were he to make a movie today ("could I do a zombie Trump?"), and would he ever make another anthology project (too expensive these days, but there is an unreleased pilot for a new "Tales from the Darkside" written by Joe Hill, Stephen King's son and the kid in "Creepshow").  He made several mentions of "my former partner" (John Russo) never saying his name directly in the manner of He Who Must Not be Named.  The crowd was apparently well aware of Romero's distaste for the current zombie elephant in the room, "The Walking Dead" (he's famously called it "a soap opera with a zombie occasionally" and turned down offers to direct an episode) so it was scarcely brought up, and then only obliquely by Romero himself ("the Walking Dead will eventually stop walking," he said, to laughter, when discussing his potential re-entry into zombie movies).  He also mentioned two recent remakes of his work, "Dawn of the Dead" ("the first 15 minutes were good, but after that it was kind of pointless") and "The Crazies" ("they just liked the title," he said, repeating the theme of flash and bombast over substance).  Despite his criticism of the current state of the zombie genre and horror movies in general, not once did he seem bitter or mean-spirited.  He was actually quite jovial and warm, giving the impression of being an extremely down-to-earth, unpretentious person in a field (directing) known for being quite the opposite.  One of my favorite moments came when a well-meaning but slightly fawning guy in the audience stood up and prefaced his question with "because of you, I'm the man I am today".  Romero replied with a faux-incredulous "what kind of man are you?".

The "Exclusive George Romero Photo Op!" that I had paid $60 for was set to begin at 14:30.  The website had advised to be in line no later than 15 minutes beforehand, however, so I went down to get in line as soon as we finished eating, just after 14:00.  There were only about six or seven people ahead of me.  The line behind me eventually spilled out past the entranceway, resulting in several attempts by the "staph" members to get us to "tighten up this line" by moving closer together.  Eventually it became a choice between single-file and tight line.  They chose tight line.  I passed the time by people-watching...easy to do given all the costumes, and that's not including the people just dressed weird.  It was like Halloween.  There were two guys just in front of me in line whom I eventually gathered from overhearing bits and pieces of their conversation were from Alabama.  I watched as they flipped through the pictures on their phone and wondered why one of them had a uniform scowl on his face in all the shots, no matter whom or what he was posing with.  The other guy had a hockey mask hanging from his backpack.  "Brian, Jason is watching!" said an autograph on its forehead, signed "Ari Lehman, Jason 1".  I paused to consider the vagaries of how he would have addressed such an autograph to me, as well as the incongruity of ***SPOILER ALERT*** how in the original Friday the 13th Jason didn't wear a hockey mask nor was he even the killer.  In such ways I passed the time.

Here and there a short middle-aged woman on staff would come by check to make sure we were in the correct line and that we had our tickets.  She told people to remove their VIP lanyards since green would interfere with the green screen photograph.  She came through another time holding up an 8 x 10 print, showing it carefully to us and announcing that "this will be your background" (it was a shot from "Night of the Living Dead" of zombies walking across an open field, toward the camera).  Eventually she was satisfied with all that and just came back occasionally to assure us that "Mr. Romero is on his way".  Emily had been walking through the convention hall to pass the time and had come back a couple of times to tell me what she had seen.  She said Romero's booth had "a line a mile long".  Eventually, though, there was a rustle of activity near the front of the line, and it started moving. 

I couldn't see what was up ahead since the front of the line was out of sight through a doorway that veered off to the left.  Since I was so close to the front however it didn't take long for me to get up there.  The woman who had been giving us status updates was standing just inside the doorway to take our tickets and have us to "wait right here".  The whole process of stopping and starting reminded me of boarding a ride at an amusement park.  Inside the doorway I looked to the left and could see, about 30 feet away, George Romero.  He was sitting there by himself, cross-legged in a metal chair in the middle of a large room, smiling broadly, surrounded on all four corners by bright white umbrella lights.  The room had been cut roughly in half by a series of side-by-side square frames on rollers, each frame holding curtains that parted in the middle.  We were to pass through the left-side curtains when called.  Before I knew it, it was my turn.

I moved quickly, feeling a sense of nervous anticipation as if I were walking up on stage and people were waiting on me.  As I passed through the curtains I was suddenly bathed in bright white light.  It was as if I had crossed over from our mundane world of material things into the Magical World of Cinema.  Mr. Romero smiled at me warmly and extended his long, thin-fingered hand as I approached, a surreal moment that I imagine, to some of the more avid attendees, summoned up feelings of meeting an angel in Heaven.  "Good afternoon sir," I said to him, also smiling broadly to offset the formality of my greeting with the right amount of familiarity.  He greeted me as I took my spot on his right, in the same motion putting his arm firmly around me like we were old buds.  Emboldened, I returned the gesture.  A couple of seconds to pose.  Poof went the flash.  He offered his hand to me again, still smiling, and thanked me.  He skipped a beat as if to invite more conversation, but with the speed of the line movement I felt too self-conscious to hang around and tactfully went on my way.  The camera guys likewise were quite cordial to me as I left.  I guess making that much money that quickly helps.

So out I went to search for Emily.  Of course she was now nowhere to be found.  I walked through the convention hall looking for her and for the first time had an opportunity to actually look at the exhibits.  Most of the celebrities had stepped out for one reason or another, but I did see some wrestler guy who looked like Jim Morrison and a bit player from the original Ghostbusters -- the guy who got shocked during the ESP test scene, leading me to an "oh yeah, THAT guy" moment.  Most of the other people I had no idea about since they were known for their appearances on various "paranormal" shows, ghost hunters and mediums and the like.  Emily said something about recognizing one of the clairvoyants and walking hopefully behind her for a minute or so, thinking that any minute she would suddenly receive a message from the beyond about one of her relatives and relay it to her.  She sounded quite disappointed when she recounted this to me.

Unsuccessful in finding her, I went back out to the entrance, thinking maybe she was there.  Still no luck.  I turned on my iPod in hopes of connecting to wi-fi and texting her, but the convention center's wi-fi wanted a username and password.  The lady in the photo-op line had told us our pictures would be ready at the ticket window within 30 minutes, so I still had time.  Eventually I did find Emily.  I had her hold my stuff (programs, tickets, iPod) while I went back out to the parking lot to get my Creepshow Blu-Ray.  Next stop: autograph time. 

When I got back I showed the ticket people the black "SF" stamp on the back of my left hand to regain entry.  I had passed a couple of people I'm sure were celebrity guests, famous in some way unknown to me.  Something about the way they were dressed -- all black, plenty of leather, in the manner of Ed Hardy and latter-day Mötley Crüe -- and their carefully made-up faces.  Even though I didn't know who they were, it was kind of odd to see them walking to and from the food court and the restrooms, often by themselves, just like anybody else, breaking the Fourth Wall just by existing.

The pictures were ready.  The woman at the counter flipped through them, eventually finding mine toward the bottom.  Actually I found it, having her stop and go back after she passed it up.  It was inside a plastic sleeve.  Turned out well.

So we made our way back to the back of the convention hall, to Mr. Romero's table at the far end.  I was expecting a long wait, probably the longest of the day.  I had to cajole Emily to come with me since her feet were hurting and she had just found a chair to rest in.  I needed something to occupy me in case there was a long wait. 

Surprisingly, there weren't many people at his table, and he had already returned (officially, the photo-op session wasn't over until 15:15 and it wasn't quite that late yet).  Just five or six people in front of us.  You could tell his line was built to accommodate many more people...yellow ropes outlined it snaking out into a nearby stairwell and up one wall before it passed by the merchandise table.  The table had dozens of promotional pictures on it you could buy, covering pretty much all of his movies, even obscure ones like "Martin" and "Two Evil Eyes".  I recognized many of them from my years of perusing Romeroana on eBay, in books, and on the internet.  There was the one of him posing with Dario Argento ("he doesn't like anything he didn't write," Romero quipped during the Q & A session).  There was another of him standing face-to-face with the hideously fanged Fluffy from Creepshow's "The Crate".  A little further down was a smattering of DVDs and Blu-Rays, including the very "Creepshow" I had in my hand and had bought last week from Amazon just for this purpose.  They also had screenplay booklets for "Night of the Living Dead" and "Day of the Dead" ("Dawn" was sold out) and and ties emblazoned with pictures of zombies.  The most expensive item was a $75 "Limited Edition George Romero Plush" doll.  No keychains, surprisingly.

Sitting at the next table was a woman we for some reason assumed to be his wife.  I decided she functioned as a sort of gatekeeper, taking money for the merchandise and perhaps offering approval or denial of your stated request before you actually reached Mr. Romero at the end of the table.  When I reached her I submitted my photo and Blu-Ray on the table and said I would like a couple of autographs.  "Oh, you got this here," she said with an ambiguous inflection that I wasn't sure was a question or not.  "Yes," I said, not sure what she was referring to but figuring it best to go along.  "It'll be fifty dollars," she said softly.  I gave her three $20s, which she placed inside a blue bank envelope, her hand returning with a $10 in change.  I had lucked out.  Autographs were $50 apiece.  I'm not sure which item she didn't charge me for, but in essence I got one free. 

We waited patiently for a guy in front of us to finish up.  "It's been an honor to meet you sir," he was saying as he walked away.  The guy directly in front of us in line asked me if I would snap his picture when he got up there.  I told him I would, but a moment later the gatekeeper lady offered to do it for him so he let her.  We'd overheard people talking to her earlier...apparently you had to buy something to get a picture.  She was telling them what the cheapest item they had was.

So my turn came.  As I approached, I could see that what I thought was a button of some kind on his vest was actually a little plastic face of Dr. Tongue from "Day of the Dead".  Emily, heretofore having shown no interest of any kind in the proceedings, was sure to get a hello and a handshake from him first.  I said hello, expressed my gratitude at getting to meet him, and asked him if he would sign my stuff.  The chair was there, inviting, and I had seen at least one other person in front of us doing it, so as he was looking at my stuff I saw my chance and slipped around the table to sit down.  So there I was, sitting next to the man who pretty much single-handedly created the zombie as we know it.  I pulled the photo out of its sleeve.  "Oh yeah, we met earlier," he said, recognizing me from the photo.  "I like the way they did the background, the zombies in the field".  He asked me where I wanted him to sign it...I told him wherever, however you usually do it.  He was more indecisive on the Creepshow Blu-Ray, taking the artwork paper out of the plastic sleeve before saying out loud that he couldn't really find a good place to sign it.  I suggested signing the disc itself, which he did, managing to just fit his signature on it before running out of space on the right.  "Oh, this is the Blu-Ray," he said, "this is the one with the special features on it".  I had just opened it the night before and watched the intro with Emily as a sort of appetite-whetting ritual.  I had turned it off just before things got interesting in "Father's Day" since I needed to get some sleep.  Turns out it doesn't have any special features other than the trailer.  "That's one of the scariest movies I've ever seen," I told him.  "Still is".  "It's supposed to be funny!" he mock-chided me, and chuckled.  "I saw it when I was little, and it wasn't very funny to me," I told him.  He seemed to be putting a fair amount of concentration into his signing, saying something about the markers being dull (there was a pile of dozens of Sharpies nearby in dozens of colors), so I kept mostly quiet while he was working on them.  That done, I bade him farewell with another handshake, thanked him for being there, and took my leave.

I had told Emily to be ready with her phone to take some pictures of us.  I hadn't really expected to be able to, since I had read something on the ScareFest website about how candid shots at booths were not allowed contractually, presumably so as not to undermine the $60 photo op business.  But we had seen plenty of people in front of us doing it.  She managed to get several of us as he was signing and immediately posted them on Facebook.  I monitored the likes and comments and time went by. 

So my mission was accomplished.  I had hoped for a similar experience with Malcolm McDowell at my first ScareFest three years ago, but his detached retina prevented that, as did our Disney trip the year after that.  But this go-round had worked out just fine. 

"Jodorowsky's Dune" (2013): Netflixin 12/16/14

I remember being eight or nine years old and occasionally going with my mom or grandmother to a local drug store.  We would sometimes buy my Halloween costumes there (the boxed "Ben Cooper" plastic and vinyl smock-and-mask variety, very popular when I was little) but it was to me otherwise a pretty boring place.

Except for the periodicals section.

I spent most of my time there.  It was stocked with enough magazines and comic books to keep any kid occupied for hours.  My favorites were "Mad" and "Cracked", along with "Dynamite" and "Hot Dog".  Then there were the more "adult" items, higher up so kids couldn't reach them.  I remember seeing "National Lampoon" but don't think I ever looked at it.

One forbidden magazine that did catch my eye, however, was "The Savage Sword of Conan".  Sometimes somebody would leave a copy down low where I could see it.  I must have still been afraid to look inside one, though, since all I really remember were the covers.  They reminded me thematically of the sword-and-sorcery fantasy of "He-Man" (which I was really into at the time) but with a darker, more grown-up edge.  Grim-faced muscle men grappling with various monsters and bad guys, swords and battle axes dripping with blood, nubile women alternately cowering in the background or actively participating in the mahem.  Images that have stuck in my head to this day...just on the border between scary and cool.

On a recent flight back from Japan in September, I was flipping through the in-flight movies.  I had already exhausted "In-Flight Trivia" and watched the latest "Godzilla" and the "Robocop" remake.  The last movie I put on was "Jodorowsky's Dune".  I remember the David Lynch version (which, incidentally, came out right around the time of my interludes at the drug store magazine rack) coming on TV once, miniseries-like, with its impenetrable weirdness ("you'd have to be a genius to keep up with it," I remember Mom saying).  I got back into it during my college days, picking up the first book at a used bookstore.  Today that work sits on my shelf, the bookmark on page 97, right where I left it almost 20 years ago.  I have the DVD, but it functions more as a collection of images and set-pieces than a cohesive movie.

So finally to the movie at hand, a documentary about the failed attempt by the Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky to make his own version of the book in the mid-70s, ten years before Lynch's version came out.  Jodorowsky is known for "El Topo", a bizarro cult movie from 1970 that I can best describe as a metaphysical western.  I'm sure his "Dune" would have been similarly strange, although I'm conflicted about whether he could have out-weirded the director of "Eraserhead".

Consisting mostly of interview footage of Jodorowsky himself and various other people involved in the project, certain parts of the movie unearthed an old sense of wonder in me, activating that part of my nine-year-old brain that tingled when I looked at those "Conan" covers.  In order to pitch the movie to various studios, Jodorowsky assembled a doorstop of a book -- several inches thick -- with practically the entire film storyboarded, along with costume and set illustrations.  The best parts of the documentary (apart from Jodorowsky's charmingly erratic English syntax and effusive "mad artiste" persona) are when these storyboards come to life through modern animation effects, haunting old-school sci-fi synth music thrumming in the background...a glimpse of the great epic that wasn't to be.  And when he talks about the all-star cast he had ready (Orson Welles, Salvador Dali, Mick Jagger, etc.) it's hard not to feel that the world is culturally poorer for the movie having never been made.               

A debt repaid

Last night I finished making amends for an 18-year-old wrong.

In English class my senior year of high school we were assigned two oral book reports – one a novel of our choosing, the other a Shakespearean play. It was the spring semester and projects and scholarship applications were coming fast and furious, so I felt the need to cut a corner or two. I liked Shakespeare…starting with Romeo and Juliet in 8th grade on through A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth into high school I felt an affinity for the works much more than most of my classmates I’m sure. There was a certain feeling of accomplishment that came over me when I peered at the often arcane structure and syntax of the lines, and there, out of the mists and fog, I got it. Kind of like eating something because it’s good for you and enjoying it at the same time. I think I most enjoyed the stories…the twists and turns, the triumphs and tragedies that could still entertain hundreds of years after they were written. The lyricism of the dialogue was nice, but in my mind it was secondary…just there to make it all pretty. And beset by work on all sides, it made for an impediment that I wasn’t interested in wrestling with.

Enter Cliff’s Notes. Yes, that sure ticket to academic Hades cursed by high school English teachers everywhere. I had used Cliff’s Notes in the past, but only in their capacity to do good…to review and expound upon material I had already duly read in its original format. But this time I was going to use it for nefarious means, in the very capacity explicitly warned against in ominous smallcaps in each edition’s preface:

“THESE NOTES ARE NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR THE TEXT ITSELF OR FOR THE CLASSROOM DISCUSSIONS OF THE TEXT, AND STUDENTS WHO ATTEMPT TO USE THEM IN THIS WAY ARE DENYING THEMSELVES THE VERY EDUCATION THAT THEY ARE PRESUMABLY GIVING THEIR MOST VITAL YEARS TO ACHIEVE.”

But how would anyone know? It was an individual report, and an oral presentation at that. I could wing it. And wing it I did. Quite successfully, I might add, my energies in the meantime apportioned to more pressing matters.

Oh yeah, the play? The stumblingblock to my progress? The Merchant of Venice.

Time counts, and keeps counting. I had survived that report, that class, high school, and college. Year by year, new knowledge piled on top of the old. Cobwebs formed on the older memories, scattered and languishing in remote corners of my mind. Dusty and neglected, they began to fade. Some, like my time spent with The Comical History of The Merchant of Venice, were from their birth never that strong to begin with. Their passing was almost effortless, like a puff of smoke dissipating in a light breeze. I had a hazy remembrance of Shylock, Portia, the pound of flesh, and little else. Maybe enough to recognize a midlevel Jeopardy question. And this disappointed me. I was disappointed in myself. I felt responsible for that play. As silly as it sounds, I still felt, almost two decades removed from that English class, that that play was mine.

I still like Shakespeare. Probably now more than ever. I’ve made it one of my life’s goals to never stop learning. I am now my own teacher with the world as my classroom. The more I learn, the more I realize that a person could spend a lifetime in a single short corridor of the vast maze of human knowledge and still never master it alone. So I follow my interests, hoping if nothing else to appreciate and contextualize what I see. I’ve recently started reading Shakespeare again, revisiting old favorites from school and experiencing others for the first time. I still have my old essays and worksheets from the first go-round. It is surreal to be able to have a sort of discussion with my old self, comparing and contrasting opinions then and now, a time removed from the present roughly 5% of the lifetime of the plays themselves. My Shakespearian renaissance began with Richard III, the play I did my first classroom presentation on back in 9th grade (and actually did read). It has continued with The Tempest, Othello, and King Lear. I am doing it partly as entertainment, partly as Jeopardy research, and partly as learning for learning’s sake. My current effort is powered chiefly by the No Fear Shakespeare series, a side-by-side “plain English” version of the more popular plays (yes, still taking shortcuts). I was able to “read” King Lear in one day this way. To get more out of the plays I follow-up with the respective chapter in my SparkNotes “Literature” reference book…scene-by-scene synopses, notable quotations, important thematic elements, etc. Finally I’ll watch a video stage adaptation or feature film to tie it all together. So, in a more elaborate and leisurely way, I’m still using Cliff’s Notes.

One day, I looked up, and there was The Merchant. After 18 years, Shylock had come to me to extract his pound of flesh. It was time to repay him.

This time would be different. The No Fear treatment I had been giving the other titles would not suffice. I jumped right to the Mother of All Shakespeare Editions, the master’s- / Ph.D.-level Arden Shakespeare. I was going to, to quote Shylock (you knew this was coming), “better the instruction.” (To give you a feel for Arden’s approach, approximately 75% of each page in the play portion of the book is taken up by footnotes, and fully half of the entire work is introduction and appendices). My reading sequence was thus, scene by scene: original text (Arden), modern text (No Fear), footnotes (Arden). I consulted my SparkNotes and Oxford Companion to Shakespeare occasionally for summaries and analysis. It was slow going, but I felt as if got as much as I could out of it. I waded through the meandering and often opaque Arden introduction the best I could. When I had finished I watched the minimalist 1980 BBC television version on youtube then the 2004 Al Pacino movie version from netflix. Last night was the final step in my atonement, a live production by the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company.

I stepped out of the parking garage and was instantly set upon by an assumed panhandler / irritant of some sort whom I identified by her repeated “excuse me”s as she approached from across the street. After the third repetition of her uninvited query she muttered something to herself and gave up. I had successfully ignored her and was continuing on my way. Dinner was a few blocks away at a place I had read about on urbanspoon called “Tom and Chee”, sort of a sophisticated grilled cheese and tomato soup type of place. I’ve never been a fan of grilled cheese (I remember those gooey, boring versions Mom used to always make Dad out of Kraft slices, white bread, and what seemed like a stick of butter), but the menu looked appetizing, the ranking was high, and my sense of adventure there enough to give it a try. The menu is huge, a good 20 feet of chalkboard running across the top of two adjacent walls above the counter. I had done my homework though so I was ready to order shortly after I walked in. I had the bacon and blue (bacon, blue cheese, and mozzarella) on wheat with a side of chunky tomato basil soup. $7.99 for a moderate portion. Ok at first, it grew on me, especially after I started dipping it in the soup. By the time I was done I was glad I had tried it, fat content aside. Comfort food that would be even better in the cold of winter. I had timed things pretty well. A leisurely walk back to the parking garage to leave my sunglasses and I was at the theater around 25 minutes before curtain. The place is pretty small…the lobby and the theater itself. It reminded me of a narrow, shrunken movie theater. I had chosen my seat, H1, on the aisle and about halfway back. Even the back row would have had a good view…in the front you would have to be careful not to trip the actors as they walked past during the foreground parts.

I enjoyed the play. The theater was small enough to lend an intimate feel. Maybe it’s the difference between theater and film, but the acting seemed a little heavy-handed and melodramatic at times. The play was bookended by a pair of invented scenes: an opening pantomime similar to the one in the film providing background for the animosity between Antonio and Shylock and an ending with the now-outcast Shylock barred from the Ghetto and being spat on by Tubal, the play ending with his bloodcurdling wails. The latter scene embodied both what I liked and disliked about the production: (sporadic) thematic darkness and overacting, respectively. Much of the play was done a bit light for my taste…its classification as a “comedy” taken in the literal modern sense most of the time with lines I had always read as black comedy. A group in the back seemed determined to laugh at every line even remotely considered funny, as if to project to everyone their ability to recognize and appreciate 400-year-old puns. I look at Shakespearian humor like I do Austin Powers or Monty Python…funny, but in a smile-to-yourself amusing way rather than laughing out loud. And I can’t say the cast didn’t encourage them. The actor playing Gratiano wrung out every bit of the crude and loutish nature of the character through gestures as well as line delivery. Engaging and popular, yes, subtle and nuanced, no. Portia was weak and scared during the trial scene, quite different from the nervous confidence I like. I did like the treatment of Lancelet, however. His manic and inventive monologue in Act II Scene 2 had everybody laughing (myself included). Unfortunately the fact that the actor who played him recognizably doubled as Tubal undermined the latter’s more serious bearing in the scenes in which he appeared. And the flamboyant Arragon was so over-the-top that he got his own round of applause when he exited.

Part of what makes Shakespeare great is that his plays are open to interpretation. Different productions can emphasize or minimize details to create a version of a play thematically distinct from others. The Cincinnati version seemed to want to do a bit of everything. The difference between the light approach to the “comedic” bits and the often dark treatment of Shylock’s rage and ultimate victimization was a bit jarring to me. I like the overall dark and cynical approach the movie version did a good job with. Subjectivity was alive and well, as I overheard fellow audience members discussing and critiquing during the intermission. A Jewish family a couple of rows up thought Shylock was being played as too deranged after his yelling stab at a piece of bread to close out the first half. A professorial man further back was discussing with his family the climate of anti-Semitism prevalent in the play. The final (invented) scene of Shylock at the gate was obviously meant to engender sympathy toward the character, but such a potentially heavy-handed portrayal still meshed well with the complex nature of the man apparent in all but the most blatantly anti-Semitic productions over the years.

So, 18 years later, I now know The Merchant of Venice. This time, I read it. My debt is paid.

November 1992: Redneckaphobia

Academic team is really the only thing I miss about high school. We were The Beast of the Lake Cumberland Academic Conference (us, North Laurel, SW Pulaski, Somerset, Wayne County, Monticello, Lincoln County, etc.) throughout my career, never losing a league game and laying waste to all in our path. Our first real challenge of the year was always Madison Central in the finals of the Regional Governor's Cup.

(My senior year, this game almost led to the first in-game brawl in the history of academic team, but that is a story for another day. Yes, there was almost a fight in the middle of a freaking academic team game. Thug life. I am not making that up).

But all of this was a moot point. To be considered good in the grand scheme of things, you had to be able to play with and beat the Lexington and Louisville schools. The magnet schools. The schools where the kids went whose parents had Ph.D.s, lots of money, and Mensa-level genetics. Otherwise you were just an also-ran from Podunkville, Ky.

My junior year we got a chance to get a taste of state-level competition without the pressure of win-or-go-home State Governor's Cup thanks to the geniuses who came up with the Holiday Bowl, an invitation-only tournament for the state's sixteen best quick recall teams. Like State, it was held at the Executive West in Louisville.

Considering the top-to-bottom level of competition, it was a given that there would be no warm-up -- we would be tossed right into the fire. Our first-round opponent was Louisville Ballard. We didn't know much about them, but the word "Louisville" in their name reflexively made us think of a row of future Rhodes Scholars bound for Yale and Princeton, cracking wry smiles as they backhanded questions about fractals, particle physics, and Gaussian curves. DuPont Manual won the state quick recall title every other year, and they were in the same league.

So the game commenced. We were playing in the chapel. Fingers on hairtrigger, we held our own. I can still remember the surge of adrenaline we had when we looked up at each other at halftime and had the lead.

It was time to switch sides. When we went over to the other table, I saw that the scratch paper the Ballard player had left at my spot had some writing on it. Normally at halftime you wadded your paper up and threw it away. I'm not sure if it was to prevent the other team from looking at it and seeing how much or how little you knew or simply a matter of etiquette to leave them a clean area, but we had always done it under some sort of unwritten rule. So the paper quickly caught my attention.

I read the only thing on it that wasn't crossed out: "I ain't scared of y'all."

I showed the other guys. We all got a little snicker out of it. We're playing in the big time now, guys. Trash talk in an academic team game. These city slickers callin' us hillbillies. The same hillbillies who, incidentally, are currently besting them in a competition that measures knowledge.

You can probably see where this story is going, so I won't prolong the drama any more. We won the game, and with it one of the sweetest victories of my entire career. Not just because it was a Louisville school, but because it was a Louisville school with a superiority complex.

The Ballardians slunk away after the post-game handshakes, dour faces giving insight into the self-refelction that must follow losing to a team you had ridiculed only minutes before as being inherently inferior. We took the liberty of sneaking in some inappropriately loud "skeered" and "y'all"s into our post-game banter.

And yes, I still have that paper. I kept it as a trophy.

Spring 1996 -- A tacky rubber clinic

In recognition of my ongoing renaissance in the game of filthy sidespin and cobra-like reflexes, a tale from the ping pong archives:

College was when I first got into the game. I guess it was the multitude of tables everywhere you went. My friend Ulysses had grown up as a military brat, skipping around the Pacific rim in his early days, and thus had a decent foundation. His most notable habit was playing in the Chinese penhold style -- index finger and thumb encircling the handle where it meets the blade and the entire paddle being held "upside down" with no real forehand or backhand -- just twisting the wrist side to side to adjust to ball location. He had his own paddle as well. I was suffering from tennis withdrawal and was happy to take up what looked to be a smaller-scale, indoor version of that sport.

Ulysses and I sparred regularly, mostly on the glossy but beat-up green table at the Blazer Hall food court. We recruited some interested (albeit less fanatical) guys from the dorm for an informal league, complete with stat compilations and occasional tournaments. As our skills increased, our rallies became longer and more frenetic, often drawing the attention of passers-by and people sitting at the tables enjoying their hot wings from KFC. The highlight of these audience interaction sessions was a pick-up game with a grocery-shopping Tony Delk* (accompanied by Walter McCarty), who you may recognize as having big careers in another sport.

Apparently we also drew the attention of somebody else.

One day, in the middle of one of our many epic tit-for-tats, a couple of guys walked quietly up and sat down. One of them, a guy with glasses and shaggy brown hair, was carrying a small pouch. He sat down, and, in a process that reminded me of peeling the layers off of an onion, winnowed his pouch down to a paddle case, then a plastic bag, and finally a paddle. He took out a cloth and polished it. I glanced at Ulysses and could tell he was thinking the same thing as I was. It was a mixture of mirth and, yes, fear. The way he was treating his paddle reminded me of the way people treat their firearms. He obviously meant business. At the break, he asked if he could have the next game.

I was first. The ball headed his way. He poked it back nonchalantly...effortlessly. We continued until he was warm. Ok, he's definitely not a novice. But I've played before too. This should be fun. Challenging, maybe, but fun.

So the game started. I served first, but I would soon be on the receiving end, Apollo Creed - Ivan Drago style. He took a wide swing and brushed up on the ball as he hit it. The shot that headed my way reminded me of a lob in tennis.

Is this a joke?

I stood back and waited for the ball to hit. New guy or not, I was going to make him taste this one.

This is how we play.

What happened next seemed to defy all laws of physics that I had known up until that point.

The lazy lob, upon being reintroduced to a solid surface, shot out at me with a fierce kick and a much lower angle. I missed it completely.

I didn't know it at the time, but I had just been introduced to a previously unencountered dimension of table tennis -- spin. Ulysses, for all his skill, played with a bare-wood paddle. Every ball he hit, and consequently, most of the shots I had seen in my playing career up to that point, was as flat as a board.

I did adapt, somewhat. That is to say, I actually started to make contact with some of those freaky shots. But then came my introduction to the secondary rub of the double-edged sword that is hitting back a heavy topspin shot. All of my returns went way long. And the ones that by some small miracle stayed on the table inevitably came back anyway, since, well, the guy was pretty good. He was picking balls up off of his shoelaces and sending them back with the same heavy juice. Soon enough the carnage was over. Exasperated, I ceded the table to Ulysses.

More of the same. Although I didn't know it at the time, I think Uly was able to handle him a bit better since the flipside of not being able to create spin with a rubberless paddle is that it is less affected by incoming spin from your opponent. But it's a testament to this guy's skill that he was able to force so many errors even against a paddle that's just about as frictionless as they get.

So our hard lesson was learned. The new guy thanked us for the game. We humbly thanked him back, taken down more than one notch. His friend came back, and I saw him ask how it went. The new guy cracked a slight grin and shook his head.

We never saw that guy again. I remember hearing from somebody that he had a coach and and been invited to try out for the Olympic team. Maybe true, maybe not.

Our confidence came back soon enough. Even if that was real table tennis, we still liked our little games better, humble as they were.



*In answer to the inevitable question from my curious readers, Delk's table tennis style can best be described as a close-to-the-table chopper. He was better than I thought. But yes, we could have taken him.


Addendum, 5/11/08: Web designers, take note -- put the words "rubber clinic", "filthy", and "tacky" in your text and you'll get lots of traffic.

And people here based on a search for the above keywords, um, sorry to disappoint you. This story was about ping-pong.

1998: A Spinal Tap moment

The life of a college student is to enjoy the simple things of life...things normal citizens take for granted. Air conditioning. Pay for your work. Cooked food. One of my simple pleasures was fast food beyond the played-out old KFC in Blazer Hall. I would save up my cashflow so I could splurge on Taco Bell for dinner on Thursdays.

Occasionally my posse and I would make a weekend stop at the Nicholasville Road Bell for a little fun time. Hey, they had a jukebox. As was my custom in those days, my order invariably included a Meximelt with no pico. This request, humble as it was, turned out to be a curveball for unsuspecting Taco Bell cashiers, who would scan their keypad furtively looking for that elusive "no pico" button. As I said before, this was my custom, so in spite of my upside-down perspective a byproduct of my consistency was my involuntarily learning where this button was.

So here I was, Friday night, and this poor guy with a 70s mustache and a too-cool-for-school black mullet was looking for the no pico button. And looking. And looking. Patient me was looking as well. Finally after a good 30 seconds I could take it no more and pointed toward the object of his quest.

"Don't touch my register," came the reply and accompanying backhanded swat. He mumbled it under his breath and didn't look up, so it took me a second to realize that it was really happening.

"I wasn't touching it, I was just pointing at it," I said. I wasn't going to touch it. I was just pointing at it. Can I look at it?

I must have really teed this guy off. I looked up later to see him still stewing behind the register, taking short paces back and forth, scowling. The manager would walk over occasionally and say something to him.

I had no desire to die, so I left as soon as we were finished. I'm not sure what happened to that guy. I didn't see him there any more.

Summer 1988

My biggest vice when I was a kid was video games. I played every day. I took every report card to Pepperoni's Playhouse and they gave me a cupful of tokens. I made video game doodles at school. I got $20 for my 11th birthday and promptly blew it all on Ghosts and Goblins. Such was my obsession.

The crackhouse for my addiction was the good ol' L & M Quickstop just down the road. They kept an endless cycle of cabinets, bringing in a new one every few months whenever my friends and I would complete them (often) or give up (rarely). Double Dragon. Superman. Altered Beast. Choplifter. (The infamous) Ghosts and Goblins. Double Dragon II. Guerrilla War. Karnov. Mat Mania. 1942. Punch-Out. In the early days they had Donkey Kong and Galaga...one time somebody broke in overnight, cracking open the quarter buckets in the process. I spent hours there the next day getting free games by hitting the exposed coin toggle...so long that, considering the snow and cold weather that day, I was in no small amount of trouble when I finally made it back home.

It was during one of my countless runs to the store on my bike that I got myself into some trouble. There was a kid named Bobby who lived down the other end of the street from me. He was my age or maybe a year older, but he was big for his age and carried a scowl that matched his temper. Definitely more of an acquaintance than a friend, considering that he went to a different school and I didn't see him very much except for chance meetings out on my bike. Bobby was known to be a little imposing.

So I was on my way to play whatever the current game was. It took me about 1 minute to get to the store from my house on my bike, thanks to the mostly downhill route. The final descent was the steepest. A sensation as close to flying as a 12 year old can get.

So I was picking up speed, my pocketful of quarters eagerly awaiting their fate. There, about 300 feet ahead, was Bobby on his bike. He was stopped in the road when I saw him, positioned perpindicular to my path. It took me an extra half second to see him thanks to my mental state. I moved over to the right to pass him. He looked to his left, saw me coming, and took a couple of steps back, placing his back wheel squarely in my way. What does he want? I thought. I wasn't sure exactly what I should do at that moment. My momentary indecision turned to annoyance. What a punk. Does he think he owns this road? If he wants to talk to me he can get out of the way and wave me down like a normal person.

By that moment the time for thinking was over. My front tire made contact with his back wheel at a high rate of speed. There was a crash, but it wasn't me. A slight wobble, then the sound of crashing metal on asphalt somewhere behind. I didn't look back.

As my quarter supply dwindled, my thoughts gradually returned to the real world, and real world consequences. I started to get a gooey feeling in the pit of my stomach when I thought about having to go back home, crawling slowly uphill, past the very scene of the crime. Images of a road-burned 12 year old who was already well into puberty and a head taller than me made me realize that this time physics wouldn't be my ally. But it was all for naught. He was nowhere to be found. No blood on the pavement, either.

Many more trips to the store would follow that summer. Each corner turned on the route had me furtively scanning the road ahead for any sign of Bobby. And with each deserted road came a sigh of relief.

Part of the mythos of Ghosts and Goblins was the $500 reward. Supposedly, the designers had made the game so impossibly difficult that they had offered a $500 reward to anyone who could complete it. I required more hairline reflexes than I or any of my friends could muster. We didn't honestly think the $500 was anything we could ever hope to win, but that didn't stop us from feeding it the complete contents of our piggy banks and not batting an eye. Even if any one of us had won, he probably would have rapidly inserted the entire 2000 quarters into another game within 10 days.

But there was one guy we did think had a chance. An older guy, probably in his 30s, who possessed what we judged to be superhuman video game prowess. He could play Double Dragon all day on one quarter. Altered Beast was so boring to him any more that he didn't even bother. He could bend spoons with his mind. His name was Tom.

Before I ever saw the legend with my own eyes I saw the mark of his skill: the initials KAT at the top of every high score list of every game L & M Quick Stop ever had, there like a flag atop Everest. I surmised that I was ever in his presence I would do everything I could to convince him to take me as his disciple, residing in his secret mountain hideway until I mastered the hand-eye coordination of a cobra. Then I would live out the rest of my days not only on the $500, but also on the other prizes I would win on all the other games mortals were foolish enough to dub "impossible."

Such were my aspirations. But I had more pressing issues to worry about, namely getting back home for dinner. So I started the climb home. As I neared the turnoff for my road, what I saw made my blood run cold. There, cruising toward me from the other end of the street, was a group of about 3 kids on bikes. Upon seeing me, they spread out, covering the whole road. The one in the middle was taller than the others. He was scowling. Bobby.

"I knew I was going to have to kick somebody's (butt) today," I heard. Sorry dude, you're too late. I'm almost home. And I'm not going that way. I made the right turn onto my road, which is thankfully followed by a quick downhill. I lived to fight another day.

But something stayed in my mind as I sat down to my mashed potatoes: you can't do this all summer. You should be able to go to the store and back without having to worry about altercations. And you definitely can't run from this guy every time you see him.

The day of reckoning finally came, as I knew it would, on a sunny August day in 1988. I was on my way to the store. I was picking up speed when I saw Bobby on his bike heading in my direction. He stopped. I stopped. To be honest, I don't remember much of what we said. I do remember shaking his hand and telling him that we needed to let bygones be bygones. I also remember that I didn't have to worry any more about going to the store from then on.

March 2005: Juan Carlos Gutiérrez, el bufón de Chile

The somewhat creepy South Pacific flava of our Easter Island trip drawing to a close, my usual international travel partner (dad) and I were enduring stop #1 amongst the cold steel-and-glass girders of Santiago Airport, patiently awaiting the plane that would take us on to Dallas and the good ol' U S and A. It has always been a relief to me to finally make it to the airport, security cleared and nothing else to do but wait.

So I sat down and relaxed, trying one last time to osmotically acquire some Spanish through the, I'm sure, hilarious episode of "Brujas" playing on the airport LCD tv. "Brujas" apparently is, or was, the thing in Chile, judging from how every tv I laid eyes on during that trip was either showing it or a commercial for it.

Dad took a seat in a less crowded area of the room. A couple of seats over was a mustachioed guy with glasses. Little did I now that this nondescript dude and his opinions would soon become the stuff of family lore.

I lost myself in thought and didn't pay any attention to dad until I got up for a restroom break. As I walked past him I saw that he was having a conversation with the guy sitting next to him. Dad likes to do that, strike up conversations with strangers when we travel.

Suddenly I got the joke. Earlier in the week, when we landed in Santiago on the way down, the lady at the customs booth had, after looking at my passport and nudging her partner, looked me in the eye and pronounced my name somewhat salaciously as "Hassan." I looked at her and smiled faintly, not sure whether to take it as a compliment or an insult. Right then, on tv, my differently-pronounced namesake was having his name whispered rapturously by a female "Brujas" castmember as soft-focus passion ensued.

Across the room I could see dad getting more animated. This guy must really be getting his goat. When he enters wide-eye-and-gesticulating-forcefully-mode you know something's up. I chuckled to myself and turned back to the tv. Politics always come up.

It was only later that I learned what had gotten him so worked up. The guy he was talking to was a native Chilean who lived part of the year in Vancouver. He liked to rile up Americans in his spare time. I'm not sure exactly how the conversation went, but apparently the guy, whose name was Juan Carlos, said Americans were a group of belligerent troublemakers who forced their will on all the other nations of the world. Not only that, dad related, but each one of us is directly responsible for it. "You," Juan Carlos had told him, "were part of the plot President Nixon hatched to have President Allende assasinated. You, you, you." That was where all the finger pointing came in. By the Doctrine of Juan Carlos, we, as American citizens, are complicit to all the pain and suffering our government inflicts upon our global brethren. That was the gist of their conversation, anyway.

Finally boarding time rolled around. Our group was called and we got up to get on the plane and the 8 hours of confinement that went with it. I handed the guy at the counter my ticket. He paused, then flipped it over and looked at the back.

"Sir, do you have your boarding pass?"

Umm, that's all I have. What else do I need?

"This is your ticket. You need a boarding pass."

By this time dad was up there too. He had the same things that I had. He didn't have a boarding pass either. Knowing how worked up he would always get at the mere thought of anything blocking us from arriving at the airport less than three hours ahead of our scheduled departure, I knew this would not be good. His eyes were already as wide as saucers.

"Here's our tickets. This is our plane. Can't you let us get on?" he said tersely.

"I can't sir. Not without a boarding pass. You haven't paid the departure tax."

The bridgeway was empty except for us. The plane was scheduled to leave in five minutes.

Ok, I thought. Simple enough. Apparently the people on Easter Island had forgotten to issue us boarding passes for Santiago. Let's just pay the departure tax now and be done with it.

Four minutes.

Dad had the same idea. "Here's my credit card. Just put it on this." After some hesitation, they agreed. One of the guys disappeared with the card.

Three minutes.

"Where is he?" Dad seethed, his face red. "If he has to go all the way back to the ticket counter, we're gonna miss the plane." I could see the helplessness in his eyes.

Two minutes.

Down the hall, first the footsteps. The guy was coming back.

"Ok," dad said with more than a hint of sarcasm. "Can we get on the plane now?"

I walked on ahead, down the jetway, hoping at the end would be the plane and not empty space. I glanced back to see where dad was.

He had his backpack off, a look of frustration on his face. A couple of security guards had stopped him halfway down the ramp and were rifling through his things. I caught his glance and shrugged my shoulders.

"Go ahead," he said, shrugging back.

Needless to say I was one of the last ones on the plane. I was informed by one of the flight attendants, rather impatiently, that we would leave as soon as all passengers were in their seats with their seatbelts fastened. I promptly complied, relieved that I had made it. As I was sitting down, I saw dad walking down the aisle. He had made it, after all.

To this day, dad contends that Juan Carlos had something to do with all that.

I was in the window seat. The whirlwind that had surrounded our boarding was just beginning to fade. I looked over to see who was sitting next to me in the aisle seat.

It was none other than Juan Carlos, social conscience of the Chilean nation.

He greeted me jovially, remembering me from earlier.

"Your father, I like him. He is a good man."

Ok...

We shot the breeze for a while. He seemed like an affable enough guy. He asked what I did for a living.

"I'm a pharmacist."

"Good profession," he nodded. "You know what I like to do sometimes? I enjoy some good marijuana." He pronounced this slowly, wrapping his tongue around it and processing it in such thick Spanish inflection that the word itself became foreign.

"Hmm," I said. "That's nice." I wasn't taking the bait.

He told me I needed to do everything I could "to get Bush out of there." Nope.

We talked on and on, well past Peru and into Ecuador. He ordered a miniature bottle of wine with his dinner and our conversation turned to the finer things in life: wine, good food, women. He may have been about 60 but he had the enthusiastic spirit of a guy half his age. We talked and laughed on into the night. After a lull in the conversation I looked over and ol' Juan Carlos had tuckered out.

When morning came, the flight attendants passed out the customs declaration cards. I glanced over and saw Juan Carlos take out his passport.

DOMINION OF CANADA. JUAN CARLOS GUTIERREZ.

Before long we were on the ground in Dallas. I saw Juan Carlos ahead of me, suitcase in tow, turn left into the human river of DFW.

Then he was gone.

June 1994

During my high school days there wasn't a whole lot to do that didn't result in an undesirable update to one's criminal record. "Whaddya wanna do?" was asked so frequently that you think we could have created the answer that never existed.

Thankfully there were sports. Those weekends and summers consisted of tennis, backyard baseball, basketball, and mini golf. Epic battles, shots and hits that became part of our collective mythology. When we had conquered one game, we set out to work on another. Eventually the time came for us to try a new, more blue-blood pursuit.

Real golf.

I'm not sure who first sprang this idea. One of our clique used to amuse himself but whacking golf balls into the woods behind his house. It sounded like a fun enough diversion...the only problem was that it cost like 20 bucks to play a round at this little podunk course close to the house. A pretty good chunk of change. But we all came up with it.

So with one set of clubs for four guys, we headed out to the clubhouse. A handful of middle-aged guys in golf shirts and Titleist hats were spread out across to room, lounging, smoking cigarettes, and shooting the breeze. They looked up at as warily. The owner took our money and directed us toward our golf carts, instructing us firmly to "stay on the paths."

On the first tee we all took our cuts. My problem was purging the mechanics of my baseball swing from my mind, something I can't quite do even to this day. As a result I missed the ball completely 50% of the time, put wicked topspin on it 30%, or sliced/hooked it 15%. Do the math and you'll see why I found that I could just throw the ball and get much better results in shorter time to boot. The other guys weren't much better. The good thing was that once we got on the green we could hold our own thanks to our mini skills.

As you could probably guess we lost a lot of balls this way. Luckily for me one of my hobbies in earlier times was combing the cow fields and creeks that bordered another golf course for wayward balls. I made pretty respectable money selling them (back?) to the golfers as they passed by. But I couldn't sell them all, so I had tapped into my supply for this outing. The other guys didn't have such a reserve. They also didn't have the disposable income to buy new ones. Therein lay fate.

The other guys had found an elegant, albeit dishonest, way to circumvent their shortcoming. You could either pay $2.00 for a sleeve of three balls that would last maybe two holes if you were lucky or you could pay 75 cents for a small bucket of balls from the driving range. You can probably guess which one they chose.

So we played on. We had a blast thanks to the fact that we actually got better toward the end. I was still throwing the ball off the tee for the most part so I had about three balls left by the time we got back to the clubhouse to turn in our cart.

The atmosphere in the clubhouse this time had changed. It was as if all the air had been sucked out of the place. Any doubts we had about its origin were erased when we saw the owner standing there to meet us, face ruddy, eyes bulging.

"Have you boys been playing with range balls?"

Umm...uhhh...

His anger was increasing by the second.

"That's what I thought. I don't know why I even bother. You kids rip me off every chance you get. Why do you want to do things like that? Range balls are for the driving range! You don't play with range balls!"

The middle-aged men stood around us too, no longer lounging. Sullen and stern looks all. I guess they were there to catch us if we tried to make a run for it. We should have known he would have sent somebody out to spy on us. A gang of teenage boys given free reign over two golf carts and the whole golf course? Not a chance.

Then it was time to give each of us the treatment individually. He practically sprinted the six feet over to me when my time came. An indistinguishable rant into my face about my morals and motivations followed.

"I wasn't using range balls," I declared simply. "Oh yeah, you never do anything," came the sarcastic reply, as if he had known me all my life. "What's that in your pocket? Give me those!"

He had seen the bulge in my pocket where my remaining supply was. I complied as if in slow motion. He immediately took the balls over to the counter and dumped them into his "for sale" bucket.

So we left. That was the first and last time we played golf.