Wake Up

The winter morning is warm despite the cold.

Warm among the trees icy desolation has rendered naked.

Warm because the light is returning.

Stronger. Fuller. Speaking more loudly than the air.

Waking our loved ones so they can wake their loved ones to see the hope of the light that sustains us.

So, What Is Your Position On The Redistribution Of Wealth?

Interesting platform.

It's a good thing Joe McCarthy ain't around anymore.

Redistribution of wealth. Funding support for paramedics. A program for on-the-job counseling. And an initiative to dispatch personal chefs to each household of overworked parents/people who suck at cooking.

Help in the kitchen: Talk about catering to the soccer mom vote.

Now if he could just mandate national holidays during the first two rounds of March Madness, he'd unite both the conservative and liberal regular-guy contigent.

It's short on specifics, mostly involving how to fund it all -- but rhetoric and cult of personality get you elected. And kissing babies, which he does pretty well.

"Asa '08: 'Help In The Kitchen!'"

No Stoner Left Behind

I won't shit you. South Carolina has a long way to go to be known more for its smarts than its looks.

We're like a good-looking chick with no brains. Kind of trashy, but pretty in a way, you guess. The beaches and the mountains and all the trees are good on the eyes. Just don't be surprised if you ask us who wrote, "To be, or not to be?" and we say, "I don't know. Must've been a gay dude."

But let's step back from it all and put it in perspective.

For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the state of our education, we're still doing OK.

It's not anywhere near a scientific equation. It's not forward-thinking. It's probably a case study in resigning yourself to low expectations.

But I think that as long as you'd be considered a genius 100 years ago, you're all right.

Society depends on those among us who are content with this.

It's a sad state of affairs when you can't get a management position at the Jack In The Box simply because company policy states you have to have a high school diploma or GED.

But ...

Could you go back to the year 1907 and describe the basic components of a 1984 Chevy S-10 engine to a guy struggling over how to keep the stagecoach wheel from rattling? If you're from South Carolina, you've got a good chance. And I'm sure that even as shitty as a 1984 Chevy S-10 is, it's a lot better than whatever they were putting out in 1907.

Could you use barre chords to play the opening intro to "Iron Man?" Trust me, if you don't already know ... even you can do it.

Could you describe to someone the basic outline of how space and time interrelate? Sure you can. Just think it and be it, man.

OK, maybe you can't (with just a straight-D high school diploma) describe how miniscule pieces of digital data float in the air and reassemble to create a message of text on a piece of flat glass that glows. I graduated from a university, and I can't really explain that with one -- not without retreating to my requesite WiFi-equipped coffee shop and Googling it on a laptop.

But, overall, it'd be hard not to be worshipped as a Man Of Tommorow in 1907 based on a modern-day high school education.

Forget No Child Left Behind, we'll set up a new standard:

Make just enough progress today that it at least keeps pace with each year that passes a century ago.

The Sweet Science Is So Romantic

The front:





The back:





That's kind of what I think about the whole thing, too, son.

How Far Does Six Million Dollars Go These Days?

Cue methodic drum beat and space rocket explosion sounds:

NASA One: “It looks good at NASA One.”

B-52 Pilot: “Roger. BCS arm switch is on.”

NASA One: “OK, Victor.”

B-52 Pilot: “Landing rocket arm switch is on.”

B-52 Pilot: “Here comes the throttle. Circuit breakers in.”

Steve Austin: “We have separation.”

Chase plane: “Roger.”

B-52 Pilot: “Inboard and outboards are on.”

B-52 Pilot: “I’m coming forward with the sidestick.”

NASA One: “All looks good.”

B-52 Pilot: “Ah, roger.”

Steve Austin: “I’ve got a blowout — damper three!”

Chase plane: “Get your pitch to zero.”

Steve Austin: “Pitch is out! I can’t hold altitude!”

B-52 Pilot: “Correction. Alpha hold is off. Trim selectors. Emergency!”

Steve Austin: “FlightCom! I can’t hold it! She’s breaking up, she’s break ... !"


Now the narrator. Strange electronic noises. Drum beat keeps building:


Narrator: “Steve Austin: astronaut. A man barely alive.”

Oscar Goldman: “Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before.

Better.

Stronger.

Faster.”


In comes the music:


DAAAAA-NAAAAA-NAAAAHHHH ... DA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NAAAAAHHHH ... DOWWWW-DOW-DOW-DA-DOWWWWWWW ....





I really don't remember a whole lot about the Bionic Man.

It was kind of like "Super Friends." I remember that I loved it, but I was just a little too young to really have it memorized (unlike "Star Wars," "Superman," "Transformers," "G.I. Joe" etc ...)

I know I had the big doll whose arm opened up to show a bunch of mechanical stuff. You could look through the back of his head through his one bionic eye.




The sound effect when he did something bionic was unique and strangely cool. Lee Majors had one of those archetypcal '70s hero looks. He had a real pimpin' outfit. A smooth bossman. And something about fighting Big Foot or something.

That's about it.

But I recently (don't ask me why) downloaded a sound clip of the theme for the "Six Million Dollar Man," and that's all it takes for me to know that they need to make a "Six Million Dollar Man" movie.

Even if it costs more than six million dollars.

You know, six million dollars still sounds like a lot to me. Maybe it would cost more to make the movie than it would to make the man, but damnit, you can't change the name.

Television re-makes don't always work out. OK, they almost never don't work out.

But this one would. I know it.

(Unless they tried to make it into a comedy starring Jim Carrey. Big mistake).

I can't give you a screenplay -- but I can sketch out a few basic guidelines.

First of all, the intro music and the chatter stays (except maybe I'd "de-'70s-itize" the music right at the end with just the slightest alteration that makes it sound less "Hawaii Five-O-ish").

The thicker hair would stay, even though Steve Austin is an OSI military man. No high-and-tight. It would be a big mistake to streamline him wearing all "Matrix" black and sporting an ear jack. No fat ties or trooper 'staches, though.

He'd experience a mid-'80s Captain America inner struggle. Something about loving his country but questioning it, too. He might even quit like Captain America did. Bryan Singer would pull this off perfect.

There would be a slick Oscar Goldman character. Real slick. Somebody like ... like ... I don't know, you know.

I can't think of a good villain, but he needs to be all yin-yang. The mirror image of Steve Austin. They hate each other because of their familiarity. He should be former military. Rogue. And he'd have to open up a can o' corn on Steve. He could be stripped out like "The Terminator," leaving him to be repaired with even better features, kind of like the later episodes of "Knight Rider" when K.I.T.T. got all pimped out.

The government would have to be sketchy and conniving. But pragmatic. Like it allows us to live our lives the way we want without having to worry about how it's done.

Steve would need to have a central weakness. Like, he's strong and can see real good and can run real fast in slow motion, but he can't repel bullets and it's not like all that mechanical stuff made him any smarter. He depends on technology, so it has to screw him somehow. Love-hate.

The bionic sound -- that electronic grinding effect -- has to stay. Doing that keeps just enough camp to keep it fun and forces us to either suspend belief or walk out of the theater early, in disgust, like a neurotic, punk-ass geek.

And there has to be a Bionic Woman. And her name is Jaime Sommers. But only at the end. She's being constructed at the end.

And we won't see her in full effect until the next movie.

And they'll end up having to fight each other.

But I don't want to get ahead of myself.

'And The Snow Is Flaking, Hearts Are Breaking, Words Are Making A Mess Out Of These Thoughts I'm Thinking'

It snowed today for the first time in three years.

Oh, we've had our share of ice. But not snow. No snowballs, no footprints, no snowmen. Just frozen daggers and clear sheets of treachery.

I was only able to enjoy it for about an hour or so before I had to go to work.

I finally got to use the sled that I, along with my neighbor, got for Christmas a few years back from our respective wives.

Wait, I'm sorry ... Santa Claus.





Work wasn't so bad. You get be one of the few heroes who actually made it into the office. And I work downtown next to our riverside park and took a few minutes to take a look at the landscape.






I never got around to building a snowman. Work took a little longer than I thought it would, and I lamented that all the snow would melt by Friday afternoon.

But while I was gone, the neighborhood stirred. Children who normally don't see each other found themselves playing together. That's something really great about snow -- especially here in the South, where it's such a novelty that a mere two inches receives around-the-clock news coverage.

I was told to drive by the neighbor's house on the way home and check out the ... unique ... snowman next door.

As I drove by, it was clear to me that this had been the work of an adult. But, come to find out, this was a creation the neighborhood kids came up with.




And it's name?

Peter.