Missa in Angustiis

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 30, Verses 2 & 3:

"I am too stupid even to call myself a human being!  

I cannot understand man, let alone God."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

Orson Welles once said, "I don't pray because I don't want to bore God".  I guess I feel kind of the same way.  I suppose, in some sort of perverted, disorganized and unfortunate way, these blog posts could be construed as a type of prayer.  Something is created, if you want to be kind and call it that, and it is sent out, maybe sent up.  Prayers are pleas, right?  They're missives intended to be heard, if not heeded.  

Hear us, O Lord.  We beseech you and so forth.  

I'm doing the same thing, if artlessly so.  Hear me, O Best Beloved.  I beseech you and so forth. 

Whether we're secular or pious, we've been sending things out, and maybe up, for a very long time.  Whether it's been psychotic scribblings on walls or Haydn's "Lord Nelson Mass", a tumultuous and terrifying play about Vietnam by David Rabe, whether it's an Excel spreadsheet on a deadline or a whistleblowing expose of greed or incompetence or worse-- it's all prayer.  Every raspy, erotic exhalation and every turn signal and each creak of the rocking chair and each diaper change.  Every cough and every tear.  

Every, every minute.

And I suppose that's why people think they need religion because, without it, we don't know what the fuck we're doing.  We're like fumbling with buttons in the dark.  We're too stupid even to call ourselves human beings.  We're lazy and scared and there's a mess on the desk and dog shit out back and twins tenuously asleep in the next room and everything is precarious and we're all holding it in or holding back or waiting for the next thing.  

What is the next thing going to be?

I remember when my brother-in-law died of cancer.  He was thirty-four.  And the babies had just been born.  And I was thinking, what could it be?  The next thing.  Even in the couple of months from his diagnosis to his death, there were many "next things".  More MRIs.  More scans.  More tumors.  More texts.  More calls.  Every time the phone rang or went "bleepboop" it was bad.  It was so bad.  And I don't think I ever prayed for him.  Not formally.  No Hebrew.  I mean-- he wasn't Jewish, so maybe it wouldn't have gotten translated right anyway.  But there was plenty of prayer.  My kind of prayer.  

This.

DO YOU HEAR ME UP THERE YOU FUCK?

I love it.  You pray to the guy who did it. Hilarious.  A scream.  A howler.  Crazygonuts.  Fucking phonies.

The high holidays are coming again.  They always do.  We're going to go to services and march around with the children behind the torahs.  It is what it is.  I don't believe in it any more than I believe in Santa Claus.  Hell, I believe in Santa Claus more-- at least I get to play him at the psych hospital.  And read "A Christmas Carol".  I love that.  There's no prayer more prayery than that.  Dickens in the Day Room.  

It doesn't heal a soul.  It doesn't do a thing.  But it does what art is supposed to do: take you out of the place you are in, for a moment or two.  Take you out of yourself.  Out of your own psyche.  Your own troubles.  Your own shit.  It does it for me as much as it does it for them.  

My children are having what my wife calls "The Language Explosion".  In laymen's terms: they're talking their little asses off.  

mamadadacarshoessipcupuppacrackercookiewatercookieavodacoballbeepbeepbearblankieandalltherestofit

One day, they're going to start asking me about God and religion and humanity and why people use nerve gas on each other and why the former president put a cigar in that idiot's vagina and why the neighbor doesn't like us and why are there little shiny bits in the street that glisten like diamonds and why diamonds are a girl's best friend and why they don't have any friends and what were we like before they were born and what happens when we die and why do birds suddenly appear and bluebirds say.

What the fuck do they say?

What the fuck do I say?

What will I say?

I'm kind of hoping they befriend an old man.  Not a creepers old man with a dirty trench coat and a comb-over and a ubiquitous white van, but a wizened old man, all crinkly behind his gold-rimmed glasses and his well-worn wingtips and his faded corduroys who'll sit on his porch and tell them stories about the way it was and he'll have clever, quaint, slightly biting, deadpan and droll way of looking at the world.  And they'll soak in his words and his wisdom and they'll repeat his aphorisms at school and their teachers will call them "old souls" and they'll know things-- they'll just know.  

You know?

Because I don't.  I just don't know.  And I know that's supposed to be one of the bravest things you can possibly say, but these are troubled times.  They're always troubled times.  And I just don't know.   

And One More Leading Nowhere, Just for Show

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 23, Verse 4

"Don't weary yourself trying to get rich."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

I saw "Fiddler on the Roof" on Sunday.  Licensed, American Jews are required to see this play performed live at least six times in their lifetime.

(The Good Book says.)  

At 33, I can say I've done my Semitic duty twice.  I'm on my way.

Jews born after 1971, the Good Book was amended to read, must be subjected to repeated, innumerable viewings of the film-- at least until the Betamax or VHS tape wears to the point where the wedding procession for Tzitel and Motel goes fuzzy.  Then you can say you're ready to become a man, or woman.  In our faith, the bar/bat mitzvah means nothing.  It's all about the wear on the "Fiddler" tape, which must be checked and documented by a rabbi or his designee.  

And notarized.

On Sunday, I sat in the audience, in the second row, mind you, of a large summer theatre organization of which I used to be a part many years ago, to see this production of "Fiddler".  It was a strong, ambitious, energetic production.  As my wife pointed out, to see "Fiddler" as a Jew is kind of an uncomfortable experience-- you really have to allow yourself to get over the schlockiness of some of the stereotypes, particularly nebbishy Motel and shrill-as-a-pill, up-in-yo-grill Yenta.  I was okay after about twenty minutes.  And then it took me another ten or so after intermission to get back into it.  But I was thoroughly along for the ride.  I got caught up in the swell of the Bottle Dance at the wedding, even though I could see the outline of the bottle rest inside the black hats, which ruined some of the illusion, but who cares?  When I saw the production at my old college-- the first time I'd ever seen "Fiddler" on stage-- one of the bottles dropped, which made it even more exciting because you're sitting there going, "FUCK!  They're really DOING it!"

That's what live theatre is.  Waiting for the bottle to drop.  

We're all waiting for the bottle to drop, I think.  At plays, in life.  Wherever.  For some of us, it's thrilling, for some of us, it's an inevitability and we drolly congratulate ourselves when it happens.  I know which camp I'm in, and I wish I was in the other.

Don't you?

I was listening intently, as if I was hearing it for the first time, the lyrics to "If I Were a Rich Man" and, even though I hate it when people say this, I hear it differently now.  Now it's not just some fat schlub throwing his arms around in the air going "yebbadeebadeebayebbadeebadeebaDUH!".  Now it's someone with whom I identify a little bit more, and not because he's Jewish.  Because he's fantasizing.  He's allowing his mind to go there, which is a dangerous thing-- far more dangerous than dancing around with a bottle on your head or, for Christ's sake, on a roof with a goddamn violin.

Dreams are ballsy.  

My wife and I are dreamers.  We just had a contractor over to talk about ripping the shit out of our bathroom.  Why?  There's nothing especially wrong with it.  Everything's functional.  The faucet does its faucet thing.  The tub fills, and it empties.  

Oh, but it's all disgusting and we hate it we hate it we hate it we hate it.

We're people who hate our bathroom.

I guess there are people out there who don't quite have that luxury-- to hate some inanimate porcelain things-- but we do.  We are that.  And, if I were a rich man, I'd do marble this and granite that and stainless this and rip that out and re-caulk that and strip off this and slap on that and wouldn't have to work hard yebbadeebadeebaDUMB.

You know?  I would.

We look at listings on Zillow.  We call it "Real Estate Porn".  Look, but don't touch.  Can't touch this.  Is this the little home I purchased it?  When did it get to be so small?

So.  Fucking.  Small.

We can't sell our house.  We can't get a bigger one.  But we gaze.  We ooh and aah at exposed beams.

Mmmmmmmm... yeah, EXPOSE THOSE BEAMS, LOVER!  SHOW ME YOUR COPPER FLASHING!!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH  OOOOOOOOOOH!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Sorry.  I'll just.... clean that up..... later.)

Everything's so small, everything's so precarious.  I joked with some woman a few days ago.  I joke with women.  Call it flirting-- I don't care.  She was saying that she's terrified of zombies.  I furrowed my brow at her.

"How old are you?  Listen, I don't need zombies to scare me.  I wake up every morning terrified just that I've woken up."

Work is terrifying.  Coming home is wonderful, but also terrifying.  Making money is terrifying.  Making so little of it is terrifying.  Making so much of it is terrifying.  And, all the time, that bottle.

That fucking bottle.  

Sunrise.  Sunset.  

Amen.

Symbolic of JUNK!

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 29, Verse 23

"Pride ends in a fall, while humility brings honor."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

PBS gets white, Jewish people talking.  

Recently, PBS aired "American Masters: Mel Brooks", and this really got white, Jewish people talking.  More specifically, it got white, Jewish people talking to me.  The first conversation, to be fair, that I had about Mel Brooks that was inspired by this American Masters profile was with a friend of mine who isn't Jewish, but he might as well be.  We got into a disagreement (maybe) about the fact that I don't like Mel Brooks.  He was surprised.  I guess when you're white, Jewish, and reasonably funny, you're supposed to like Mel Brooks.

Last night, another friend of mine, who is definitely Jewish, remarked via text that he wished I was in New York with him so we could watch "American Masters: Mel Brooks" together.

Me: "Watching that with me wouldn't be very much fun.  Why?  Because he lacks the deep, vexing insecurities we both possess.  Or, at least, he hides it well."

Friend: "You don't even like 'The Producers'?  Fuck you!"

Friend (after some apparent consideration): "And I will fully admit that Mel's ego and personality can be extremely irritating, but even just by virtue of gathering such brilliant artists around him for his films, he deserves immense credit."

I struggle with my dislike of Mel Brooks and, when I struggle with things, I turn to my wife for answers.  As usual, she shot, and she scored.

"You don't like Mel Brooks," she said definitively, "because he's Jewish-- not only is he Jewish, he's exactly the kind of Jew you hate: he's loud, he's brash, he brags, he's in your face.  Just listening to him probably makes you want to run away screaming."

And she's right.  I heard maybe a minute, though probably less, of him doing an NPR interview and I shut it off, hitting the Power button on the radio as if a fly had just landed on it and was about to take a shit.  

"I revived the musical comedy."

"Spamalot" and "Book of Mormon" owe something to him and "The Producers".  

And maybe they do, but you saying it makes me want to vomit.  Do you have to say it?  

I'm not able, I suppose, to separate the man's personality from his work, the way I am with, say, Woody Allen.  Somehow, I can excuse the fact that Woody Allen has sexual intercourse with his adopted daughter, but I can't forgive Mel Brooks for being the sort of obnoxious Jewish stereotype that I despise-- the guy at the country club loudly talking about how his son is "DOING PRETTY WELL FOR HIMSELF" as bits of corned beef are flying out of his mouth, windjamming on cccchoffing spittle projectiles.

(That's pronounced "CCCCCCCCHHHOFFFFFING" for you fucking goyim out there.)  

I need my funny men to be insecure-- not just insecure, wracked with insecurity.  When Woody Allen gets interviewed or goes out in public, he is almost always wincing, as if a steel spike covered in peanut butter and red ants is being driven into his colon and being twisted around.  That's what I want to see.  Not Mel Brooks, who, when he's in front of a microphone and a camera looks like a kid on a Ferris wheel being inducted into the Shiteating Hall of Fame.

He sparkles, he glows, he's-- cute.

You're 86 years old, man.  Don't give me fucking cute.

OH!  SO HAPPY TO SEE YOU TAKING MY PICTURE!  CAN I HAVE A COPY?

IT MIGHT BE BLACK-AND-WHITE, BUT I'M A COLORFUL GUY!

AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD?  DON'T STOP THERE!

ARE YOU FUCKING LAUGHING YET, YOU SCHMUCK?

You get the idea.  

Mel Brooks once said, "If you're quiet, you're not living.  You've got to be noisy, and colorful and lively".  He is certainly all of those things, and he knows it.  And, yeah, he's funny, too, and he knows that, too.  And he doesn't just know it, he'll tell you all about it.  And I don't know about you, but I kind of don't want to hear that, and I don't have time for someone who thinks they're funnier than I do.  And I suppose I've always been someone who admires quiet.  Conservative.  Reserved.  Maybe that's why I'm drawn to the comedy of the English.  

Not the Russell Brand kind.

I wonder what the English make of Mel Brooks.  Obviously, I'm sure there are some English people who think he's shit, and others who think he's champagne, but culturally, I mean.  I'd be willing to bet that he's not so hot over there, although I don't quite know how you'd find that out.  First of all, the English aren't big on Jews anyway, so that's one strike against him, but the over the top personality I'm sure would rub at least a certain kind of Brit the wrong way.

It doesn't matter anyway, in the end.  It probably all just boils down to jealousy in the end.  He's funny looking and Jewish and famous as hell, and I'm that other stuff, and not that other thing.  Or maybe I just don't like anyone or anything that has broad appeal, because I'm contrary and a bit of a bitch.  Or maybe it's really because, deep down, I'm a raging anti-Semite, far worse than any Englishman or sheet-wearing shithead from Tuscaloosa.  

  

Maybe.