August 2009 Archives

So here's the way I see it based on the information just released about the cause of Michael Jackson's death. The butler did it. Or the doctor. Or whoever it was who was administering drugs to Michael every half hour from midnight till dawn on the morning of his death. Michael suffered insomnia and after whining about not being asleep after six hours of dosing sleep medicine, the butler, or the doctor, put Michael out for good.

What a surprise.

We're no longer surprised. The "shock" of Michael Jackson's death was shocking to few. Everyone knew it was coming. And like Elvis we knew he'd leave a good looking corpse. I wouldn't have been surprised if Michael Jackson became the Dali Lama. He was such a Bu-hoo-hoo-dist weird vibe guy. He was barely human. And by that I mean he was out of it. He did not walk in my universe. Michael Jackson was the last guy I would end a sentence in conversation with the words, "You know what I mean?"

What's a doctor doing in my bedroom constantly in the middle of the night unless I'm in the hospital. I wasn't sick, I just couldn't sleep. And I must have been one insane pain in the ass for the doc to put me under the big sleep. "Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. . ."

Michael Jackson was beautiful, brilliant and successful. Who among us wouldn't trade places with Michael? Show of hands please?

"Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. . ."

"Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. . ."

"Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. . ."

"Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. . ."

"Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. . ."

"Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. . ."

"Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. . ."

"Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. . ."

"Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. . ."

"Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. . ."

"Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. . ."

"Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. . ."

"Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. . ."

"Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. . ."

"Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. . ."

"Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. Mamma say mamma sa, ma ma coo sa. . ."

Let's talk about second chances. Specifically let's talk about second chances for two Philadelphians; one by birth, one not, both bought, both cons. Vincent Fumo, the power and glory of gravey-stained South Philadelphia Democratic politics, is off to the pokey by the end of the month to serve a stretch in a federal pen for getting caught doing what his downtown kinsmen have done since the Latin phrase "quid pro quo" was Americanized to mean "wetting my beak." Fumo was Don Vincenzo accepting the obvious tribute, both offered and expected, from grateful subjects under his harsh yet benevolent reign. Fumo walked among princes, both elected and appointed, and proved himself to be the most Machiavelian among his political peers. He served his interests well.

Michael Vick was a kid from the low-slung housing project neighborhoods of North Philadelphia, except his neighborhood was located in the vague desperate sprawl of urban poverty found in Virginia's tidewater sewer towns. Vick grew up in a culture where it was acceptable to murder puppies as sport and to drop to the ground at the sound of a pop. Followed by, "Pop. . . pop, pop, pop!" Both men made millions. Both men were famous. Both men failed to learn the larger meaning of the millions or the fame or life before doing what they did to get themselves hauled off to jail, a fair trial, a guilty verdict and years in prison.

In this transition of Philadelphia's embarrassment from being the lifelong home of yet another corrupt politician to being the canine-killer rehab facility for NFL felons, the eyes and barks of America will be directed at us. Fumo will go away quietly (what with all the Xanax and Ambien he says he's addicted to) and be nothing more than a Pennsylvania curiosity. But all football season long America will be reminded that Michael Vick plays for the city of Philadelphia. I foresee shaggy costumed Santa's being pelted like snowballs by stuffed puppy dolls. I can already hear "Who Let The Dogs Out" blaring from the sound systems at away-game stadiums when Vick enters the game. I'm beginning to feel sorry for him -- and for us -- already. Which of course makes me mad. So now I'm rooting for Michael Vick to prove me wrong. You got a second chance, Michael, now earn it. As for you, Vince? No excuses. You went to the Prep, man. You let everyone down.

THE FIRST THOUSAND TIMES I saw Adolf Hitler shout "Nine! Nine! Nine! Nine! Nine!" followed by Brad Pitt's "Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes!" during TV commercials for Quentin Tarantino's Nazi-killing summer blockbuster Inglourious Basterds, I didn't even notice that "Bastards" is spelled wrong and that "Inglorious" has an extra "u.". The second thousand times I saw the trailer for the still unrated movie, I started fantasizing about going into the Tarantino killing business. I'm well into my third thousandth viewing of this movie ad, which ranges from 30 seconds to two minutes depending on whether you're watching cable or commercial TV or the internet, and the disturbing thing is that I'm bound to see it at least 5K times before this movie opens in theaters on August 21. It's everywhere, this trailer. And the more I see the trailer the less I want to see the movie.

Not that I'm against killin' Nazis. I love the premise. I just don't want to be killin' Nazis everytime I want to watch an on demand episode from season two of Mad Men. Killin' Nazis is a perfectly fine way to kill off the waning days of August, but the fact is I've been watching Nazi killer movie trailers all summer long. It's like having every TV channel I turn on be a floating combination of Comedy Central and the History Channel. Not even Shark Week promos are as ubiquitous as this Summer of Killin' Nazis.

And by "killin'" Nazis I mean Vlad the Impaler style executions. The trailers for Inglourious Basterds make clear that this is one big happy bloodbath in which evil gets its throat slit while its family watches. "We will be cruel to the German and through our cruelty they will know who we are," says Brad Pitt, commander of the all-volunteer psycho Jewboy American army commandos who are expected to go medievel on Wermacht soldiers. "They will find the evidence of our cruelty in the disembowled, dismembered and disfigured bodies of their brothers that we leave behind."

Did I mention that this is the feel good movie of the summer?

"The German will be sickened by us," Pitt continues. "The German will talk about us. And the German will fear us." Then to leave no doubt as to the commander's expectations for his men, Pitt says, "Each man in my company owes me one hundred Nazi scalps. And I want my scalps!"

And all this is in a single trailer.

This would all be so funny if I hadn't seen Brad Pitt in a movie called Legends of the Fall in which he plays an American fighting for a Canadian regiment in World War One, who, after losing his younger brother to a German machine gun, mounts a savage one-man campaign across enemy lines in the dark with a knife and returns back in camp blood covered at dawn riding a horse with dozens of German scalps hanging from his belt.

Legends of the Fall, like A River Runs Through It, is one of Brad Pitt's great performances. I'm sure he's great in Inglourious Basterds, but I'm in no hurry to see him in this mad romp through Nazi follicles. I'm always supicious of a movie that I can't avoid on TV commercials everyday for three months before it opens. Beyond that, this movie is so off the charts in the Political Correctness Richter scale. I know that all Germans weren't Nazis, but 99 percent of Nazis were German. If this was a movie about killin' Al Queda or killin' the Taliban with the same ferocity and bloodlust as what is aimed at the Nazis, there would be a sizable outcry from critics who would fear that the movie is motivated by stealth racism. This movie is really about killin' Ay-rabs or killin' Muslims.

Oddly, in a country where Germans represent the largest single ethnic group -- more than Irish, more than English, more than Italians, more than blacks, more than Hispanics (of 300 and some million Americans, more than 50 million claim German ancestry) -- there hasn't been the predictable outcry from a maligned ethnic constituency. Evidently, nobody takes Nazis personally.

"Nazi ain't got no humanity," Brad Pitt declares in Inglourious Basterds. "They got to be destroyed."

Not to put too fine a point on my uneasiness about universal Nazi bashing. . . this week Rush Limbaugh compared Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Adolf Hitler. And to think she didn't even start an illegal war againts a foreign country based on trumped up intelligence and outright lies.

Let me tell you a story about the Liberty Bell. But first let me tell you about Mike Tait, who is a tour guide for a private company that offers walking tours around Independence Hall and environs. For the last two summers Mike and I have stood side by side in the IVC (Independence Visitors Center) at Sixth and Market Sts. trying to hawk tourists to take our walking tours (I work for a competing company). We don't hawk so much as stand there holding up tour maps for ten minutes before our scheduled tours. We talk weather, mostly, or American history. I trust him completely on either subject. Mike is one of the veteran guides who went to federal court to prevent the city from taxing tour guides the same way Parliament tried to tax paper in 1765 by the infamous Stamp Act. As I explain it on my tours, "The Stamp Act was a tax on paper, a tax on communication, a tax on free speech. That's where we get this taxation versus freedom thing in the same breath."

The proposed Philadelphia Guide Act would have required guides to pay an annual fee, take a test, be certified as "knowledgeable." Mike and two other guides fought in federal court on the grounds that this was an infringement on free speech in the very shadow of Independence Hall. They lost. Last week the judge dismissed the suit -- not because it was frivolous but because it was moot. The city of Philadelphia doesn't have the money to set up a testing program or enforce sanctions. Which means anyone can continue to tell you what they think about a city or a building or a bell. Even if that anyone is wrong.

So here is my Liberty Bell story. It took me a lifetime to understand it. And it's all about the crack. That scar across the face of Liberty. The words from the Bible on the crown of the Liberty Bell are about freeing slaves: "Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land and Unto All the Inhabitants Thereof." The bell was cast in 1751 in honor of the 50th anniversary of William Penn's Charter of Privleges, sort of Pennsylvania's Bill of Rights. When the bell developed a hairline crack in 1846 they tried to repair it by drilling out the almost invisible fissure so the metal wouldn't rub together and cause a buzzing sound. It didn't work. So they retired the bell, brought it downstairs, and for the first time on almost 100 years, people could read the words that had been ringing unseen above them all those years. "Proclaim Liberty. . ." And the crack! The crack represented slavery, the original sin that divided this country. It wasn't the Revolutionary War that made the Liberty Bell famous, it was the Civil War. Afterward the crack represented the great wound of a war that killed 650,000 Americans. Today the crack represents America's broken heart, the proud scar we bear, the price of Liberty lost and regained, a constant reminder that we are both human and capable of magnificent change. That crack is America's conscience. That crack is proof of our better nature, both flawed and honest, our attempt to heal from suffering denied or ignored. That crack is America's promise to the world: we have felt the pain, we have learned the lesson. But then, that's exactly the sort of crazy kind of stuff I tell people on my walking tours in Philadelphia because here -- in the birthplace of the United States of America -- there's still no law against it.