I'm Gonna Kill the Bear!

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 17, Verse 12

"It is safer to meet a bear robbed of her cubs

than a fool caught in his folly."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

A few years ago, I swore off getting my "news" from CNN.com.  I just couldn't stand the inanity of it, the fluff, folderol, and fiddle-dee-dee.  I mean, really, if you can find any actual news on there, it was probably put there by accident, or by some well-meaning, starry-eyed intern who actually thinks they're there to one day become the next Edward R. Murrow.  And, I'm sure, after this tidbit of real news was found, that poor sonofabitch was hoisted out of his chair by his jockeys and thrown out the 19th story window.  Assuming CNN's headquarters is in a building that high.  It's probably located in some idiot's basement.

Lately, though, I've found myself going back on occasion.  Like, for instance, a couple weeks ago I was at an all-day conference and, at the conclusion of the conference, I wanted to quickly check a news source to make sure California was still above water and East Timor didn't suddenly get attacked by East, North and South Timor.  Because NYTimes.com reads rather poorly on mobile devices, I went to CNN.com, and was satisfied that a.) the world didn't end and b.) I was right to forget CNN.com existed.  

In case you were curious, here's what CNN.com thinks you want to read about today:

• NEW Daughter visits Casey Kasem
• 'Thou shalt not' clauses rankle teachers
• Black bear reclines in a hammock
• NFL star helps teen get prom date  
• NEW Cruz wins GOP straw poll
• Turkish cops harass CNN reporter on air
• Icahn, Mickelson in trading probe
• 6 Americans detained in Honduras
• Living 60 ft. underwater for 31 days  
• 5 men arrested in girls' rape, hanging
• Suicide note chokes up vet's dad  
• Shinseki out at VA; others may follow
• Were bonuses tied to VA wait times?
• Big Papi calls pitcher a 'little girl'
• LeBron: 'I take care of what I can'  

Actually, I shouldn't say "read", rather "watch" as all of those with with the little camcorder symbol mean that, thankfully for the illiterati, no actual reading is involved.

Now I want you, please to direct your attention to the third "headline" on this little list of journalistic despair.  "Bear reclines in a hammock."

I'm sorry-- since when is that news?  I get it-- it's incongruous.  Bears don't use hammocks, SILLY!  But, see, the humor of the incongruous is, developmentally, I believe, supposed to peak and then wane at the 3-year-old mark.  Like, when you say to a toddler, "I'm a pumpkin!" they crack up and say, "No!  You not a PUMPKIN!"  So, your average pre-schooler would find the idea of a bear in a hammock hilarious.  So, does that mean that, therefore, CNN.com thinks that we have the emotional intelligence of a three-year-old?  Even if we do, and so even if we do find it funny-- is it news?  

I don't know what it is about bears, but they sure do feature prominently on the news-- and they don't even have to especially do... anything.  All they have to do is encroach a little bit too far into our territory (which, of course, we stole from them initially, and continue to do as we sprawl our way across this sorry-ass country) and they get on TV.  I mean, to me-- a bear should make the news if he claws off the faces off the alto section of a Mormon church choir.  Of if he's IN the choir.  (Bears don't sing in Mormon church choirs, SILLY!)  But, otherwise, enough with the fucking bear stories.  

And this is from a bear enthusiast.  I can remember, at a very early age, being absolutely transfixed as Marty Stouffer raised Grizz on PBS.  He fed him milk from a bottle.  Griz slept in a dresser drawer among all of Marty's neatly-folded plaid shirts.  He grew up to weigh as much as a Nissan Versa.  Stouffer got accused of illegally baiting cutthroat trout in Yellowstone.  And another childhood hero bites the dust.  

Still, my affection for bears lived on.  Perhaps it is because of my early exposure to Griz on "Wild America" that led me to seek out films that featured bears.  Two really stand out.  

"The Great Outdoors" is one of those thoroughly underrated 1980s films, with gratuitous, low-level humor and equally gratuitous low-level sanctimony and schmoopiness at the end. Still, the film had its many merits.  It was many an awkward elementary school pupil who, after seeing that film, proudly announced the his or her lunch-lady that the hotdogs being served in the school cafeteria were made of "lips and assholes."  The bear in this movie gets his bum-hair blown off by a shotgun blast in the climactic (?) scene.  Classic family viewing.  My sisters and I were fervently in love with this movie, and still quote it to this day.

Almost exactly a decade after "The Great Outdoors", another grizzly bear movie hit the big screens, and this film didn't have any (well, not much) low-level humor and decidedly no sanctimony and/or schmoopiness anywhere.  While the male duo of "The Great Outdoors" (John Candy and Dan Aykroyd) were a logical match for their comic mastery and their obvious affection for each other, the psychotic, testosterone-fueld, ragingly malevolent pairing of Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins in "The Edge" made for some uncomfortable moments while the viewer impatiently pines for a view of Elle Macpherson's lips and/or asshole.  

While doing research for this post (that might be the funniest line I've ever written), I learned that the bear in "The Great Outdoors" and "The Edge" was the same bear actor-- Bart the Bear.  I wondered, as I read his impressive film bio, how many times CNN.com did a story about Bart the Bear.  I'm sure they covered his tragic death of cancer in 2000.  He only lived 23 years, and yet he starred in 13 major motion pictures.  He was also in commercials for Labatts Blue and Tums.  I guess he needed the money.  Obviously he must have been hard up when he did "Meet the Deedles."

I have to say, I have a hell of a lot more respect for Bart the Bear (rest his 9'6" soul) than I do for pretty much anyone who works at CNN.com.  People who work there think they work for a news organization, when they're really just churning out cotton candy and rubbing it on the nipples of the American public, waiting for a cutthroat trout to come lick it off.  I don't think Bart the Bear was operating under any similar delusions about who he was or what he was doing.  He was a Goddamned bear, and he knew it.  He ripped the motherfucking gill-shit out of trout and salmon and he fucking fucked trees and took unfathomably huge dumps all over God's green earth because he was a bear and nobody was going to tell him shit about anything.  And, when those big-ass klieg lights were on, he knew he was making movies and that he was a fucking star.

And I like that.