First, I want to relate an anecdote to you: when I was a small child in the fourth grade I was horrible at alphabetical order. I needed to recite the dumb sing-song "A-B-C-D" thing in my head whenever I encountered a group of words. I managed to avoid bad grades for this "deficiency" when I was in the third grade, but when I advanced to fourth grade it finally caught up to me. The teacher even disallowed me from going to recess until I improved my alphabetical ordering efficiency. Four years later when we moved to Michigan my new school wanted to test my aptitude-- apparently it was something that they did with all out-of-state transfers. A woman produced twenty(?) cards that had various words printed on them. When she placed the cards on the table, I alphabetized them almost as quickly as she laid them down. She stared at me in astonishment: "HOW did you DO that?"
I'm willing to bet that less than one percent of the population is as proficient at alphabetizing as I.
But here's the kicker: it's utterly useless. Today our smart phones and computers alphabetize things even better than I. I can't even state that it's useful when I'm searching for CD's or DVD's anymore. Also, I buy most of my Blu Ray discs online now anyway.
But they probably continue to teach that nonsense anyway.
OH! And did I TELL YA 'BOUT MY MAD DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM SKILLS... OR... the time my teachers
A few months ago omeone told me that the complex mathematical formulae that he learned in college is useless because it's all solved for him through his phone anyway. I wouldn't know about such things because, like the vast majority of the population, I've never applied any of the math that I learned beyond the 6th grade to a real world situation.
And therein lies the dirty secret: the vast majority (not just the majority) of the things that we learn in school are either rendered obsolete later or are already unimportant and/or useless when we're in grade school.
Another anecdote: When I visited the Dodgers spring training camp last year a large line formed around first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, who made a spectacle of himself by saying (paraphrasing), "I'm just a baseball player. Why don't all of you people respect teachers and other people like you respect me? Why don't you want THEIR autographs?"
Nice, right?
Well, I was standing near the front of the line, and I had already performed numerous times in the pit of hell known as L.A. open mics, so I'm no stranger to speaking to crowds. I retorted something like, "you guys add much more enrichment and enjoyment to my life than any teacher ever has." He just grunted something inaudible like I was a lesser person then signed a few more things and headed for the clubhouse.
I stand by those words. Most entertainers (and I consider pro baseball players entertainers nowadays) have more value to me personally than any teacher I had in grade school or college. When Philip Seymour Hoffman died for me it was the most difficult celebrity death since Kurt Cobain's death. Prior to Hoffman, I could state that George Harrison held that distinction. Can I tell you how many of my teachers have died? No. It's not that I don't care about them as human beings and hope that they lived/live fulfilled lives-- it's just that they didn't do much for me, and they definitely aren't doing anything for me now.
If you want to stretch this comparison even further, I don't really know my garbage men, my postal deliverers, my town's civil engineers, etc. They are all doing great work for which I pay them, yet it has an infinitesimal impact on me personally.
So when I hear people question why entertainers have staggering salaries (I would love to ask Adrian Gonzalez if he would be willing to sacrifice his salary as a moral statement) and why people care so much about people they haven't even met-- well, for me and many other people the arts is life. Almost everything else is dull. If you want to get your mayor's or college professor's signature, have at it, man. I personally revere the people who have made my life interesting and vibrant-- sports figures, musicians, comedians, artists, directors, actors.
And Philip Seymour Hoffman was probably the third-best actor in America (in my opinion, only Daniel Day-Lewis and Leonardo DiCaprio were better-- Cate Blanchett was very close, as well). He connected with me in deep ways. For one thing, "Capote" was made during a very dark period in American history when I personally needed to be reminded that at one point intellectual titans walked among us in America, and people actually respected them.
When I read Capote's biography, the book on which the film was based, a few sentences that one of Capote's contemporaries said about him struck me again when Hoffman died:
"Truman has all the stigmata of genius. I'm convinced that genius must have stigmata. It must be wounded."
In Hoffman's case, people were quick to jump all over his gaping wounds:
Philip Seymour Heroin: the latest to get EXACTLY what he deserved. Just like anyone who sticks a needle in their arm. PERIOD.
— Tom Leykis (@tomleykis) February 2, 2014You've probably read similar statements. Well, folks, I make my own supposedly incendiary comments. I was recently banned from a chat room because I stated that the only tragedy in the Zimmerman/Martin case is that both of them didn't die when the altercation occurred because when I read the facts of the case I considered them hideous people. The moderator claimed that my statement was "hate speech," which is complete bullshit and cowardice-- she just severely disagreed with me. So I consider respectable people's "racy" comments and try to avoid having an emotional reaction to them.
The people who say that no one should care about Hoffman because he made a choice to do heroin should consider the "stigmata" aspect of genius and simply regular people's inescapable illnesses. The people who say that his death shouldn't mean anything to me because I never met the man personally should consider my statements about entertainers' value to society, let alone their family. When I cried about Hoffman I also considered the kids who he had mentioned in interviews.
And when such people extend their statements beyond the bounds of reason and actually say or write,
"good riddance"
I break from my dispassionate analysis and just say
Fuck. You.
R.I.P. to a legendary genius of an actor whose body of work was cut far too short.
No comments:
Post a Comment