Vicodin, Trimoxicillin, Ibuprofin, And Hans Blix
It finally feels like spring outside. The sun is out. I’ts fifty-some degrees. The windows are flung wide.
Despite the rampant pessimism — or simple pain — of my previous posts, I’m in fairly high spirits, perhaps thanks to a weekend of Vicodin-fueled rest. I’ve spent most of my time in bed watching DVDs as the swelling and ache in my mouth has slowly diminished. I took some heat for going to ‘Daraedevil,’ and I’m afraid that this weekend’s choices may continue to offend: ‘I-Spy,’ ‘XXX,’ ‘Signs’ and ‘The Good Girl.’ None of which have been stellar, though ‘Signs’ was both fun and original, and owen Wilson had me laughing out loud more than once.
We had another ‘War Contingency Rehearsal’ Friday at work — a twelve hour day of Vicodin, Trimoxicillin, Ibuprofin and no solid food. I become more anxious as my role becomes clearer. Basically, every time John Norris or Gideon Yago reads an email or refers to poll data, that’s my doing (and that of my team). Perhaps last week’s finest accomplishment, save for finally getting my implant procedure started, was MTVNews.com’s Hans Blix Feature (see “Hans Blix: Caught Between Iraq & A Hard Place”). Norris snagged an interview and came back to the studio amped about it, so I suggested we post the entire Q&A online. We did. It’s very ‘Hans Blix: Unplugged,’ which is to say, he’s candid and casual as interviewees often are with us. And it makes for a great read. But no one in the media picked it up. So I sent an email to The Drudge Report on Friday afternoon, and they ran it as their top headline into Saturday, spiking that feature’s traffic by a factor of about 100.
So, now, I’m heading into the week that may be THE week. I hope it won’t come to war, but with 250,000 troops massed on the border of Iraq, it’s difficult to imagine us just turning around and coming home. Hope it turns out ok. This new millennium, that is. I keep wondering to myself, since it seems like this is such an unpopular offensive, is this what it felt like to be a German citizen back when Hitler invaded Poland? All this aggression going on in the name of one’s nation?
My New Implants
I just got in from implant surgery. I’m waiting for the pharmacy to fill my Vicodin prescription. My entire jaw is throbbing and tingling — believe it or not — itching as the novacaine wears off.
Dr. Kissel, my periodontist, injected my gums and palette with novacaine over 25 times. Then he made three incisions — two below, one above — and drilled three 10mm holes into my jaw bone. Then he wrenched in the implants: tiny titanium screws, and sewed me up. Nine stitches.
I was trying to imagine beaches and desert and sun and fun while I heard the bone being drilled and tasted the blood on my tongue. I kept hearing the Foo Fighters’ song “Monkey Wrench” in my head, in tune with the hum of the drill.
So now I’m sitting here sweating, and aching. It’s snowing outside. The traffic is loud. I have a few movies rented. And a bunch of fruit and yogurt and ice cream for smoothies.
So I’m gonna’ go ice my face and watch TV.
War Contingency Rehearsal, Part I
I spent the bulk of today here at the MTV in the TRL studios downstairs doing what we refer to as “War Contingency Rehearsal.” That is, if and when this war with Iraq begins, MTV News will be going live on air for 4+ hours. Which may well be more than MTV News has ever gone live before. And it’ll certianly be a far more grave situation than anything we’ve done before. (Grammys? Video Music Awards? Please.)
So there we were, all of us, including on air talent — basically acting like Bush had given the go, and the shit had hit the fan. Acting it out, script, graphics, and packages included. I’m basically charged with assuring that MTVNews.com user email and poll data is represented on air, and dealing with any surprises. I’ve never really been on set, so it’s kind of exciting. But the entire time we’re doing this, I’m hoping we don’t have to actually do it.
In fact, I can’t believe that we’re here, on the brink of war, at all. I’ve been a fairly voracious reader of war non-fiction in the last year, specifically WWII books like “Band of Brothers,” and I’ve been watching and re-watching many of the classic war films, like “The Fighting Seabees” and “The Longest Day,” and on that data alone I feel informed enough to say “What the fuck?” I mean, how many missing limbs or severed heads do we need to see before we stop making it happen? I certianly don’t condone aggression or nuclear weapons or what have you, and I’m not naive enough to think we can go backwards, but one would think we could keep a cool hear about this whole thing and be patient with inspectors and such.
I dunno’. None of that came out as articulately as I was thinking about it while I was watching it all unfold downstairs. There’s a lot of uncertainty right now. I just hope it all turns out allright.
The Fifth Wheel
Ran the Brooklyn Half Marathon Saturday morning. It was my friend (and sometimes bass player) Jeff Domanski’s first long run. We talked almost the entire way from the Coney Island boardwalk to Prospect Park. Then had brunch with he and his wife Kristan, and my brother and his wife Jennifer (who is some six months or so pregnant).
So I was the fifth wheel, which is often the case for me these days, here in my thirties. It gets a little old: people own houses, have babies and spouses. And I live alone with my guitars. In an apartment I’ve rented for eight years. In Hell’s Kitchen.
“Summer’s Gone” is all about that, growing up, reckoning with what wasn’t, what won’t ever be. Not that I knew it at the time. You never really know what the moment’s about when you’re in it. You just gotta’ keep at it, whatever it is.
Take my new pen pal friend, we’ll call her Jane. She found me online at random searching for photos of Smith’s Point. So we started corresponding a little bit. Ends up she’s wrestling — courageously– with Hodgkin’s Disease. But her email isn’t all strum and dirge, it’s optimism. “Here Comes The Sun” was her latest subject line.
Indeed.
Mister Rogers In The Nantucket Inquirer-Mirror
The Nantucket Inquirer-Mirror published its piece today (”Mr. Rogers Says Goodbye Forever to the Neighborhood”). It’s very sweet, and illuminates yet another facet of Mr. Rogers that I didn’t know: Fred Rogers, Environmentalist.
Anyway, I did the interview from the back seat of a rental car in South Carolina just an hour after landing. Not that that should have much bearing, really, except that it was out of body enough to be on vacation, out of work, and in South Carolina, let alone to be speaking on the record about someone who just over 24 hours earlier I’d expected to see again… soon.
Anyway, I don’t love what I said, it doesn’t sound reverential enough, sufficiently awed. Because I was awed and reverential in his presence. I wouldn’t have characterized myself as “curious” to meet him. I sought him out. I wanted a mentor, a (grand)father figure. I admit it. And I don’t recall saying anything about being a triathlete, but I must have. The truth is, I ‘ve tried to swim that bay, but it creeps me out; I get scared just a few hundred feet from shore. I can do the distance, I just can’t seem to find the courage to do it alone. Mister Rogers did, though, every day at 2 p.m.
Nonetheless, it’s an honor to be even remotely associated with such greatness, and I just hope my gratitude translates.
Remembering Mister Rogers
I’ve been sad at how quickly the media has moved on from Mr. Roger’s passing. He meant so much to me, and his passing is so monumental. I can’t imagine enough ink, enough airtime. Of course, that’s unrealistic of me. I did what I could, all that I knew to do, in writing “Mister Rogers & Me.”
I finished the piece after work Thursday, and after reading it to Jen, decided to email it to family and friends in an effort to better spread his “deep and simple” message. Then, prompted by a response from sometimes-MTV News and former-USA Today writer Valerie Knome, I sent it to some newspapers: USA Today, New York Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, New York Daily News, Nantucket Inquirer & Mirror. I climbed into bed Friday morning around 1, set my alarm for 4, and nodded off.
Friday morning, my brother and I flew from Newark to Charlotte, SC, where we met up with my father and flew on to Myrtle Beach. My cell rang as we drove to Pawley’s Island, but I didn’t recognize the caller ID. So I checked the message to find that Nantucket Inquirer & Mirror writer Hadley St. John had called about my piece. I called her back and told her more about Mr. Rogers and me for an article coming out Thursday. Chritofer, dad, and I played a round of golf (I know, I know, not very rocknroll — I play to spend time with my dad and brother, period), hit the Piggly-Wiggly for chips and beer, then headed to our condo. I logged on to find an inbox full of replies from friends, families and newspaper editors all over. And while no one (save for Ms. St. John) was able to run the piece, everyone was touched, grateful I shared it, and had only nice things to say about my writing. In fact, USA Today asked if I’d like to write more for them (which is still pending).
Which brings me to this. Writing “Mister Rogers & Me” wasn’t supposed to be about me, or my validation. It was an outlet. Like songwriting. A way to get my feelings out. A way to express something. But in the end, the whole thing has been one final gift from Mr. Rogers. The man who’s life message was “You are special,” who advocated that every individual was unique and valuable, in his passing and my working through it has left me feeling like, heck, I Am. Which is about the greatest gift of all. And he gave it over, and over, and over.
Here, Mr. Rogers addresses Dartmouth College Class of 2002…
“Our world hangs like a magnificent jewel in the vastness of space. Every one of us is a part of that jewel. A facet of that jewel. And in the perspective of infinity, our differences are infinitesimal. We are intimately related. May we never even pretend that we are not.
Have you heard my favorite story that came from the Seattle Special Olympics? Well, for the 100-yard dash there were nine contestants, all of them so-called physically or mentally disabled. All nine of them assembled at the starting line and at the sound of the gun, they took off. But not long afterward one little boy stumbled and fell and hurt his knee and began to cry. The other eight children heard him crying; they slowed down, turned around and ran back to him. Every one of them ran back to him. One little girl with Down Syndrome bent down and kissed the boy and said, ‘This’ll make it better.” And the little boy got up and he the rest of the runners linked their arms togetherand joyfully walked to the finish line. They all finished the race at the same time. And when they did, everyone in that stadium stood up and clapped and whistled and cheered for a long, long, time. People who were there are still telling the story with great delight. And you know why. Because deep down, we know that what matters in this life is more than winning for ourselves. What really matters is helping others win too. Even if it means slowing down and changing our course now and then.
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius - what a name - was the last of the great Romanphilosophers and the first of the scholastics of the Middle Ages. Fifteen hundred years ago, Boethius wrote this sentence, ‘O happy race of mortals, if your hearts are ruled as is the universe by love.’ I was once invited to sit in on a master class of six young cellists from the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony. The master teacher was Yo-Yo Ma. Now, Yo-Yo is the most other-oriented genius I’ve ever known. His music comes from a very deep place within his being. And during that master class, Yo-Yo gently led those young cellists into understandings about their instruments, their music, and their selves, which some of them told me later, they’d carry with them forever.
I can still see the face of one young man who had just finished playing a movement of Brahms’ cello sonata, when Yo-Yo said, ‘Nobody else can make the sound you make.’ Of course, he meant that as a compliment to the young man. Nevertheless, he meant that also for everyone in the class. Nobody else can make the sound you make. Nobody else can choose to make that particular sound in that particular way.
I’m very much interested in choices and what it is and who it is that enable us human beings to make the choices we make all through our lives. What choices lead to ethnic cleansing? What choices lead to healing? What choices lead to the destruction of the environment? The erosion of the Sabbath? Suicide bombings or teenagers shooting teachers? What choices encourage heroism in the midst of chaos?
I have a lot of framed things in my office which people have given to me through the years and on my walls are Greek, and Hebrew, and Russian, and Chinese, and beside my chair is a French sentence from Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince. It reads, ‘L’essential… l’invisibles pour les yeux.’ What is essential is invisible to the eye.
Well, what is essential about you? And who are those who have helped you become the person that you are? Anyone who has ever graduated from a college, anyone who has ever been able to sustain a good work, has had at least one person and often many who have believed in him or her. We just don’t get to be competent human beings without a lot of different investments from others.
I’d like to give you all an invisible gift. A gift of a silent minute to think about those who have helped you become who you are today. Some of them may be here right now. Some may be far away. Some, like my astronomy professor, may even be in Heaven. But wherever they are, if they’ve loved you and encouraged you and wanted what was best in life for you, they’re right inside yourself. And I feel that you deserve quiet time on this special occasion to devote some thought to them. So let’s just take a minute in honor of those who have cared about us all along the way. One silent minute.
Whomever you’ve been thinking about, imagine how grateful they must be that during your silent times you remember how important they are to you. It’s not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It’s the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our lives from which we make our choices is very good stuff.
There’s a neighborhood song that is meant for the child in each of us and I’d like to give you the words of that song right now.
It’s you I like.
It’s not the things you wear.
It’s not the way you do your hair
But it’s you I like.
The way you are right now
The way down deep inside you.
Not the things that hide you.
Not your caps and gowns,
They’re just beside you.
But it’s you I like.
Every part of you.
Your skin, your eyes, your feelings
Whether old or new.
I hope that you remember
Even when you’re feeling blue.
That it’s you I like,
It’s you, yourself
It’s you.
It’s you I like.And what that ultimately means, of course, is that you don’t ever have to do anything sensational for people to love you. When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.
So in all that you do, in all of your life, I wish you the strength and the grace to make those choices which will allow you and your neighbor to become the best of whoever you are.”
