"Men of a certain age."

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The unexpected death of Emmy Award-winning actor, and Westwood native, James Gandolfini has a special meaning to many of his fans. In particular men like myself, men “of a certain age.”

James Gandolfini died at age 51. That’s about how old I was when, after decades of assuming I must be all right because I felt all right, I finally got around to an “annual” physical.

During the course of that much-delayed examination, the doctor took my blood pressure. He took it again. Then he took it a third time. Later, looking me straight in the eyes, he told me, “Bill, you know those stories you hear about guys who suddenly drop dead on the street? That’s you.” To say I had high blood pressure would be an understatement. The doctor was genuinely amazed I was still alive.

After he wrote out prescriptions for blood pressure medication, he penned one for a chest x-ray. “When and where did you receive your last x-ray?” I honestly couldn’t remember.

The x-ray revealed a small anomaly in the upper lobe of my left lung, a “spot.” My new primary care physician ordered a follow-up CT scan, just to be safe. The CT scan verified that indeed something was there. Next came a PET scan, to determine if the “spot” was biologically active. It was.

A surgeon told me I could wait a few months and see what, if anything, developed. Or he could perform an endoscopic procedure, take a biopsy and have the tissue examined. After ignoring my health for years, I was in no mood for waiting. I opted for the exploratory surgery.

The surgeon later recounted his horror when he discovered the “spot” was actually one of many. I was lying unconscious on the operating table, as he waited for confirmation from the pathology lab as to the type of cancer flourishing inside me. As the surgeon prepared to remove the top third of my left lung, worried about how he would tell me the bad news.

He didn’t have to. While the pathologist couldn’t immediately identify what the “spot” was, it wasn’t malignant. The surgical team patched me up and sent to the recovery room, more than a little worse for wear.

Eventually it was determined the “spot” was a type of fungus, and my lung was in the process of encapsulating it. In other words, I had respiratory equivalent of athlete’s foot, and if I had done nothing I would have been just fine.

  

I don’t regret that surgery, or the painful recovery. It taught me a number of lessons, not the least of which is the obligation I have to the people who love me. Not taking care of oneself is the ultimate in selfish behavior.

Exercise. Eat responsibly. Reduce stress. There really isn’t any mystery here. What remains a mystery is why guys like me need to have the equivalent of a near death experience before we admit to ourselves that we aren’t 23 any more.

Admitting that you are growing older is infinitely better than being dead.

Why Did Martin Scorsese Choose To Include Hurtful Stereotypes of People With Disabilities In His Beautiful New Fantasy Film Hugo?

There's no doubt that Martin Scorsese is one of the greatest American filmmakers of this, or any generation.  Which makes his inclusion of hurtful, stereotypical images of someone with a physical disability in his new film Hugo so puzzling.  Within minutes of the start, viewers see the film's hero and namesake (an adorable young Parisian orphan) being chased through a crowded railroad station by a comically uniformed police officer.

Wearing a heavy, awkward, foot-to-hip metal brace on one leg, for the next two minutes the officer and his bulky, malfunctioning brace become an unending source of "humor."

The officer's peculiar gait, his inability to maneuver around waiting passengers, a near miss involving an over-sized cake and his eventual collision with a jazz combo are all played for laughs.  But the "fun" isn't over!  Next his leg brace gets caught on the door handle of a departing passenger carriage, and he is briefly dragged along the train platform on his back.

Played by actor Sacha Baron Cohen in a style reminiscent of his famous Borat character, the police officer is the cruel villain of this particular morality tale. Later we learn he is a veteran, disabled during World War I.    

I understand this is a film about the history of film, and Mr. Scorsese wants to employ the motifs and themes of an earlier era.  Still, nearly a century later, is it still permissible to employ such crude and insensitive caricatures?  At a time when thousands of disabled American veterans are struggling to adapt to life using prosthetic limbs, leg braces and canes, is a traumatized war vet really funny?

Why is this such a big deal?  After all, Hugo is just a sweet fantasy.  Why spoil the party with a few ethical quibbles?  Because people with disabilities are usually invisible in the popular media.  Given this lack of representation, any character with a disability comes to represent all people with disabilities to audiences.

Sambo-like characters and Mammies aren't acceptable on-screen anymore.  Why is a bumbling, mobility-impaired war vet OK?   I'm sure Mr. Scorsese didn't set out to insult or offend anybody, and is a good person at heart.  The problem is there apparently wasn't anybody on the production staff, at the studio or with the distributor to raise these issues.  No wheelchair user or disabled veteran, no one who uses a leg brace or a prosthetic limb... and that might be the biggest problem of all. 

While It May Be Artificial, It Isn't Intelligence

The headline was one that would fill any would-be traveler with dread. Norwegian Cruise Ship Docks With 2 Dead Passengers In Boston. Featured on the landing page of the Huffington Post, it was sure to attract attention. It certainly caught my eye...

So I clicked on the story, and was taken to a page featuring a terse Associatd Press report. At precisely the same instant, Huff Post tracking software determined that I was the sort of person who was interested in vacations aboard cruise ships, with a preference for Norwegian Cruise Line. And so, adjacent to the story, it thoughtfully provided me with a box ad featuring a video link to the Norwegian Cruise Line home page. Lovely scenes of happy vacationers frolicking. Not on their way to Boston, I guess.

Perhaps this was some sort of Halloween prank. I doubt it. More likely its yet more evidence that algorithms still aren't quite as perceptive as real people.

The Tale of the Racing Rabbits

Having been born and raised in that quintessential American suburb -- Rutherford, NJ -- I got most of my knowledge about the animal world courtesy of Beatrix Potter, PBS and two weeks every summer at Camp Tamarack. Yet something is happening here in the 'burbs, and I may yet get the chance to produce an episode of Nature in my own backyard.

Put simply, Rutherford is full of rabbits. Oh sure, in the past we would have the occasional cottontail or two. But this year, they're all over the place. To the point where last week I saw three of them racing each other up and down the street... in the street. That's right, joyriding bunnies are taking over the block.

And either they are the classic "dumb bunnies," or they are pretty smart. Two of the larger neighborhood dogs were out for their nightly walk, but the rabbits were totally unfazed. Could it be they have learned the concept "on a leash?"

In any event, they soon kicked into overdrive and the three of them took off for points west. Only every ten yards or so the leader would suddenly stop. Just as the next rabbit was ready to collide with him (her?), he (she?) jumped straight up into the air! All that was missing was Wil E Coyote.

This year, in addition to the lapin agile, we have a bumper crop of squirrels, possums, raccoons and skunks, not to mention the woodchucks who attempted to take over my garage. Makes you start wondering just who has "dominion" over whom?

Blood, Sweat & Years

Blood, Sweat & Tears was one of the rock bands of my youth. High School to be specific. Discovery of their first album let geeky guys on the debating team (me) actually think they were pretty hip (questionable).

And while the second album lacked the genius of rock legend Al Kooper, it did still have guitarist Steve Katz. (Like Kooper, a former member of The Blues Project aka "The Jewish Beatles." )

My joy that I would be able to see the latest version of the band play live was tempered by the locale of the event, a "music under the stars" concert in Lyndhurst, New Jersey. So this is what the "counterculture" has become... a thousand "seniors" ensconced in lawn chairs in a park in suburban New Jersey?

The group did all the "hits," including some from what is admittedly the esoteric early years when (to use Steve Post's marvelous phrase) they "played in the FM band." There were the AM radio songs, along with some 1990's smooth jazz. And why not? No one should be condemned to living the life of a human jukebox, churning out the same songs the same way for eternity. (Wasn't that the plot of Satre's No Exit? See the advantages of a Jesuit education...)

Actually, the evening was a lot of fun. One of the more remarkable aspects was the small group of women who got up to dance. All these years later, they still could do those 1960's dance steps, while once again most of their husbands/boyfriends/significant others were nowhere to be seen. Proof positive that not everything changes with time.

Memorial Day

In my family, the Saturday before Memorial Day had special meaning. My brother Paul and I would go with Dad and other area veterans to place small American flags on gravesites in Hillside Cemetery.

Dad served in the Coast Guard during World War II, and was former Commander of American Legion Post 109 in Rutherford, NJ. By the time Paul and I came along, Dad had entered politics and wasn't as active in the Legion.

But one event he never missed was the annual "grave decoration detail." As Paul and I grew older, we were allowed to help plant the flags. You had to be careful. Place them too close to the headstone and the staff would jam up against the concrete base of the marker. Place it too far away and it might get snagged by a passing lawn mower.

Some graves bore the insignia of the Grand Army of the Republic, a Civil War veteran's organization. Others had the distinctive shield of the Spanish-American War vets. A few weren't marked at all. The only evidence of their existence was an entry in a tattered brown ledger one of the adults had gotten from the cemetary office.

Last names were written in bold black letters. Reynolds, Everett and Schneider. The local VFW post was named after them. Murray and Hodge were memorialized in the name of American Legion Post 453, the "Negro Post." That's the way it was then.
William Ward died in France a month before the Armistice in 1918. He was 17. Then there was the young Army Air Force lieutenant who never came home from the South Pacific. The P-38 fighter carved into his headstone a subtle indicator that the body of the lieutenant, along with his plane, was never recovered. There were new names too... Mrs. Tassey's son Malcolm. He died in Vietnam.

Throughout the years, Paul and I thought we were just "tagging along" with Dad. It would only be much later that we realized Dad had brought us there to learn a lesson... a lesson about the power of remembrance.

A few days ago I took a walk through Hillside Cemetery. Post 109 had already been there. Unfortunately, an overzealous groundskeeper mangled a couple dozen flags with his power mower. So I spent about an hour replanting those flags, making sure each was straight. I also took time to read the gravemarkers, so that I knew who each of the veterans was.

Some lessons bear repeating...

Hello, OK, Bye-Bye

It's no secret English has become something approaching the "international language." Wherever you travel, the odds are good you can find someone -- usually a high school or college student -- with a smattering of knowledge. Yet while English may eventually become ubiquitous, I find it amazing which elements of the language have become universal.

Given that "hello" is the first word taught in any English language course, it's not surprising how many little kids use it to greet foreigners. Any foreigner. In Japan, the swarms of little kids all repeating the word have been nicknamed "hello birds." (Of course, given my almost constant use of the Mandarin equivalent -- ni hao -- might just qualify me in China as a "ni hao bird."

"OK" is another near universally understood term. Whatever its origins, it's now globally accepted as the way to tell a foreigner you hear (if not actually understand) what they are saying.

Most amazing, however, is the use of "bye-bye." I have no idea how or why it has made it's way into countless local vernaculars. I've had little old ladies on farms in western China, with no apparent knowledge of English, say "so long" with a heartfelt (if accented) "bye-bye." Ditto stern faced passport inspectors at Shanghai's Pudong International Airport.

What sounds like a phrase lifted from an old Care Bear movie may well be America's most popular linguistic export. Right after "Yo," of course.