Kids, This Is A Fist: Revisited

It's Christ night, and beer isn't being sold on the one side of the Grrrowl (yes, that's three r's) arena where church groups have bought blocks of tickets in anticipation of the Christian concert to follow (you know, meta songs solely about worship as if heaven will be an eternity of bowing down to God and thinking of yourself as a piece of crap).

They say it's because of supply and demand. The beer just won't sell. Yet, the beer stands are closed at the main entrance, where the most people walk by. It's more a case of a franchise that glorifies violence marketing itself as something it really is not.

To hell with the heathens ... at least as long as they're corralled out of view on the other side where ticket-holders are of the general, ne'er-do-well, frothing-at-the-mouth, hockey fan sort.

So, yet again we have a delicious dissonance that makes minor league hockey far more interesting (ie. peeling the label off your Budweiser so that a church group wondering why you're sitting in the premium seats they had reserved don't notice your devil's brew and demand an usher check your tickets).

Yes, once again, and true to the exquisite purity of hockey, guys out on the ice don't like each other. And they agree to punch each other in the face.

These are what are known among the outraged and the aghast as "teachable moments."

"See that guy shattering that guy's nose, Tina?"

"Yeah."

"He needs to be saved. Maybe he'll stay for the concert and it'll make a dent."

The concert.

Instead of beer, Christian rock band gear is being sold en masse. Marketing Jesus as a cultural clique to belong to. Why can't we just be Christians and drink a beer?

Why must we make crucifixes out of twisty balloons?

Yes, crucifixes out of twisty balloons ...

No photoshopping has been done to embellish the sheer creepiness of this (thanks to my designated driver for having the camera phone handy).

Is this where "The Passion of the Christ" has brought us? A crucified Jesus as a mascot?

Don't castigate the twisty balloon guy. A man's got to stand out amongst the pack in some shape or form to do business with what is an overly organized and conspicuous Christian fraternity.

Business sense or no, nothing changes this absolute fact: Jesus and his horrible suffering and beautiful, yielding, world-changing sacrifice is being used to sell balloons.

Perhaps it's not too out of place. Things are kind of graphically violent here anyway.

But this is hockey.

Some things must be allowed to remain in their sacred place. If you're going to marginalize what much of the world considers, at the most, the savior of mankind, and, at the least, one of the greatest men to walk the Earth ... don't persecute the frosty brew, too.

Well, at least the beer line is short.

Eee-Ah-Mee

Let's see:

Windmill dunk like LeBron?





... or ...

Crush it like Tony Iommi?




Not too different, the two.

How liberating it must be to be the fingertipless rock Godzilla who knifed out the interludes in "War Pigs" and "Snowblind."

To be the brutally honest author of deliberate, raw, uncompromising, storm-your-castle-on-my-steed opera.

To harness electricty with economic precision and let the sonic revolt flow through you.

Kids, This Is A Fist

It's "Scout Night" here at the ice hockey arena as the Grrrowl (yes, that's three r's) take on the Gladiators. The place awash with scouts, all too evident in the shrill, high-pitched cacophony that assaults the eardrum whenever the PA announcer implores us to cheer better and louder.

It's also "Newspaper In Education Night" (the means by which I and my 4-year-old son, Asa, have free tickets near the plexiglass). Tonight, rather than a puck, the dog on the Grrrowl's jersies is biting an apple. The jerseys will be auctioned in the name of the ever-popular and ambiguous cause of education (see: Just Do It For The Kids).

The dog must do all the apple biting, because it's doubtful the players have any teeth left after this night where brawls outnumbered goals.

There's a dissonance here.

Scouts are everywhere. Cops -- who were all scouts at one time or another (still are)-- are everywhere. Fans foaming at the mouth for a fight, some rushing down the aisle to the glass shield whenever one breaks out, are the distinct majority.

There are the few who look either stunned, horrified or indifferent that men toiling in minor league hockey would cast off their helmets and flail their fists into each other's ears and cheeks.

The children are awed; the adults seem aroused as the catch a whiff of the first scent of conflict ...




(Anything about the picture look homoerotic?).

The camp of the Chicken Dance gives way to the visceral tango of the prize fighters.

It's a bizarre fusion. Entertaining. Even moreso carthartic. A vicarious release for the more-savage recesses of the collective crowd psyche.

Adults, at least most of them, don't seem to mind such a spectacle is unfolding before so many innocent eyes. After all, it's no secret that hockey players fight. Take them to a basketball game and fists start flying, and the arena is dripping with incredulty.

There is an underlying order here of acceptable, controlled violence, assimilated into the social structure that operates for two or so hours on ice -- save for the two intermissions during which the tolerance for pummeling your opponent is suspended and, yes, even discouraged.

The rules of engagement are, for the most part, clear. Two officials with nothing to protect them but helmets regulate; scores of cops with guns make sure the crowd isn't inspired.

We ask a cop outside the arena about the irony of it all, of cops standing idly by in the arena but ready to pounce with pepper spray outside it:

"I love a good fight," says the cop with the requistite power 'stache. "I like these because I don't have to get involved in it. Now, if there's one tomorrow, we'll have to break it up."

"What's tomorrow?"

"Motley Crue."

(That's an entirely different social order that mostly involves questionable fashion statements).

But beyond the apparent barbarism, a closer look through the plexiglass reveals an intricate heirarchy: As chaos reigns, two players, on opposing teams, stand together to discuss the impending aftermath of it all. They look as if they are agreeing on how the bad blood will be tempered.

They are the necessary coolheads. Without them, social appropriateness would dissolve.

Two hothead "goons" decide to put all the ills between the teams on their shoulders and face off on the center ice to settle it all. Almost a sacrificial gesture ... or, perhaps, misplaced affection ...







We gawk and howl approvingly. The glass is a barrier separating two zoos.

It's a pure, fenced-in brutality that cuts through the abstract like melted butter.

We know that this will be the end of the fighting now, because this is the way it all goes down, this is how it all gets figured out.

Oh, yeah ... the kids.

Here's the lesson, little ones: Life is difficult. People -- even those with education apples on their shirts -- don't always get along. And sometimes the only thing they can agree on is to punch each other in the face.

Just make sure those ice skates are on.

Deep In The Hills Of Appalachia

If you were to imagine the deeper recesses of the eastern Appalachians of North Carolina, would you think of ...

... this?





Perhaps.

A real "squeal-like-a-pig" kind of image.

Of course, there is the paradox of Old Glory and the Confederate battle flag that almost -- almost -- casts a patriotic glare over the far more "compelling" details of this place.

But click on the photo for a closer look -- beyond the odd, contradictory juxtaposition of allegiances.

See the two patio chairs with armrests pulled from what looks like a minivan? The smashed newspaper box saved for some future use? The collection of hazardous waste containers? The plyboarded window? The grill with antennae sticking out? The ... animal thing ... climbing up the porch post?

This is 53 12 Bodangit Gorge Hwy., where smoke can blow no other way but furiously out of the chimney. It's about 7 or 8 klicks outside Chimney Rock and Lake Lure and a little more than a bear's farthing from wherever Eric Rudolph was busted whilst dumpster-diving behind a Sav-A-Lot (heard tell they mounted his melon on the police station hallway wall and stuck some antlers on it).

People here have isolated themselves for a reason. You simply do not screw with them.

Would you screw with ...

this guy?









Of course.

Put this truck with its "The Emperor Has No Clue" and "What Would Jesus Bomb?" bumper stickers just about anywhere else in this fine land we call America and it is only a passing fancy.

But the context here -- where wood-paneled lodges leave Bibles open to the Book of John and suggest to their guests a good Baptist church to get religified in in the morning -- makes this stranger in a strange land deliciously compelling.

The rebel flag and the grill with the antennae somehow fit the culture here in an exotic way.

But this?

The "God Rules" sticker and the infinity Jesus-fish metal thingy on the tailgate thicken the plot.

Going into the ice cream shop next door, we ask who's F0x "NEWS" LIES signs that is (hoping beyond hope it's the guy behind the counter about to fix us a sundae and cut off a slice of fudge). He says, begrudgingly, prefaced with an inaudible sigh, "That's the neighbor's."

We take out the camera and get a shot of the sign.

... and the elaborate explanation scrawled manically in magic marker on posted paper telling the FedEx guy how to get to the door bell (with a diagram breaking down where the bell is and that it's exactly 7 feet high).

... and the upside down American flag sticker on the front windshield with "In Distress" plastered below. And the "If You Voted Bush, You Are To Blame" sticker on the side window.

It's either by fortuituous coincidence or by design that this fellow has what looks like a noose hanging from the back of the truck-bed cover.

It's time to meet him, whether we're ready to or not.

"I think he's coming out," my wife says as we warm up the truck. "Yes ... yes, he is. Eric, he's looking at you."

A big, intense, extremely white dude. We must have tripped his alarm (his "motion detector" he later tells us).

He approaches the car.

"Well, I'll talk to him," I say as I roll down my window.

"Did you need me for something?" he asks.

"I like your signs."

What followed was a full-on anti-Bush diatribe. A quite impressive one. This man knew how to hit his points with precision: war, Bush, social security, Bush, the death penalty, Bush, Bush, corporate nepotism, Bush, outsourcing to China, Bush.

He explained he had two children in the military, one of whom is still serving in Afghanistan, completing what he endorsed as the duty his son signed up for. He explained how they were told to pick up enemy guns and use them. How he had to send them food and thought soon he would have to send them bullets.

He talked about how, during the campaign season, 8 or 10 or so Kerry/Edwards signs were ripped from his building (which used to be some kind of store of some sort, where hoodlums also tried to break in and steal his ATM machine but he hunted them through the paved mountain passways toward Asheville as they threw tire irons out the window at him).

From the start, he dropped the sublime "Jesus was a liberal" line.

Mmmmm ... the sweet paradox. Tastes 10 times better than the sundae.

This, here, where any who choose to partake in the devil's spirits are corralled into one, easily surveiled establishment, Margaritaville or Pinacolotaburg or Rumandcokeaboro or whatever it's called.

Bible thumpin' and Bush hatin', all with a calm, resolute, intelligent, fatherly demeanor. This is a man who wants to talk in a land where few ever want to listen.

He inspires us.

So we sojourn from the village, deeper into the hills, to 53 12 on the main mountain drag -- in fact, the only drag -- on a mission to illustrate the diverse nature of isolationism.

As we pass by, two men wearing hunting gear and loading wood into a pick-up truck stand outside the home. They don't live there, but they could.

The door is closed, unlike the night before where a raging fire could be seen through the doorway beyond the "Beware Of Dog" sign.

A photo seems sketchy. Something about the rebel flag framing such a scene is spooky even for those of us who have lived in the South from birth.

I imagine, though, what I would tell the man if he approached me and asked me why I would take a picture of his house.

I would tell him, "I like your house."

And I do.

Just as I'm captivated by the man who would flip his metaphorical middle finger at everything he loathes, I'm intrigued by the man who would appear to be the flip side of the same coin.

An American who feels compelled to rebel against ... whatever.

And he retreats into the deep shadows of the mountains to do it.

It's a passive rebellion.

Against what? We can't really know if he's stirred to the same curiousity we indulge in.

His door is closed. And it never opens.

The antennae obviously aren't doing their job.

A Season Within A Season

Thanks to my kollege komrade from our USC days, Andy, for sharing this picture with me. Andy has a real passion for photography, and he's quite good at it. This is a 2003 shot of an elderly, disabled man on South Carolina's Huntington Beach, shot with slide film and manipulated in such a way that the colors and shades take on a life of their own. Click on the post title for a link to one of Andy's galleries.

This is November.

Distinctly November.

The sky is blue in a way they always say skies are blue -- where you can't believe that beyond this terrestrial canvass is the black expanse of outer space; where a stray cloud crossing the sky distinguishes itself as if it were a chalk line trying to spell something divine to us.

Shadows are rich, deep. The juxtaposition of life and decline is stark when the sun lowers in its horizon.

There is a hue to November. A mournful, reflective, resigned, brownish-cool-bluish glow surrounding everything.

They tell us this is autumn, that the sun has not yet made its full retreat from the Tropic of Cancer. That is how we define what is winter and what is fall and what is spring and summer.

But this is more.

This is November.

Not fall or winter.

It is a season within a season -- a mirror of our lives that we are loathe to look into, because it compels us to acknowledge how impermanent each moment is.

We speak of life as childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, elderly.

But it's more than that. And somewhere within us we know of the moments within larger moments.

We know that, on this beach on the Fourth of July, the sky is a gray haze and few shadows are ever cast. We are then in the fullness of light, granting us the luxury of suspending self-reflection.

But it is here -- where shadows deepen and begin to illustrate to us the true contrast -- that this undefined season imparts its wisdom.

These are the last days of the decline. Our gaze is inward. We reflect on what we were and try to find a way to imagine what it is we wanted to be.

A devoted parent? An existential fool? An iron-fisted ruler? A spiritual healer?

Or, maybe, a man who can defy physics, break the chains that bind him and fly?

It's difficult now, as we see the first signs of the sun creeping back toward the fullness of light, to imagine this time a mere few months removed yet seemingly so distant. A fleeting moment captured in color and shadow and metaphor.

Life, today, in this present season within a season, is peeking through, defying the cold freeze that ultimately marked the finality of our descent.

We see forward now.

We cast off reflection in favor of what will be.

We are renewing ourselves.

The shadows melt into the light.