Category Archives: Muddled Musings

Homer’s Odyssey (feat. Michael)

 

Michael should be 50 today. I should be giving him shit about AARP.

He didn’t quite make it, 47. Brain tumor, angry and aggressive and an appetite to die for. But at least twice a week, I want to call him, to chat documentaries or The Simpsons or The Braves or how much worse the third Mad Max was than the previous (man, he hated that flick; I thought would have an aneurysm as he fumed walking out).

Fragments of these things are still here, dude. But None holds meaning without You. Damn I miss you. I shouldn’t be here instead of you (though you would have insisted it so).

There was this talk we had once, about a year before he died. We were talking theaters (we met at one, went to hundreds), and how they had advanced since our days working box office, with newfangled seats that reclined and with the date-friendly armrests that lift. “You know what I want?” Michael, who never had a real girlfriend, once confessed. “To go to a movie and put the armrest up.”

meinmike

I recently found the last note I wrote to him. He couldn’t read it, so I don’t know if he ever heard the words. But here’s another missive in the ether for you, just in case the afterworld has wifi:

From: sb <sbowles@gmail.com>
where to buy disulfiram Subject: Michael Tyrone Bowles and Guy Scott Ingram
Date: November 12, 2012 9:03:42 PM EST

My man,
Do you remember when we first met, at Lenox Mall, working the theater? Remember how you’d knock on the counter when a cute girl was in line to buy a ticket, and how you’d pretend to drop  money to make me wait on the Orca so you’d get to wait on the hottie?
Or how, when you moved to DC, the vagrants clung to you like orphans? That hobo who sat next to you on the bus and ate that clove of garlic like it was an apple? That homeless woman who’d bring you bags of canned beets?
I think about those things all the time. I think about you all the time.
You will always be my brother, the one I never had until we met. I hear your laugh when I watch The Simpsons, hear our zombie debates after watching The Walking Dead, or hear our humorous disbelief about those Southern Republicans who made the news again. I miss every word. I miss you.
But you will never leave me, Michael. You are as much a part of me as my heart is a part of me. Perhaps because you’re the better half of it.
You were always right. We are peas in a pod. And that will let that change.
Good night, my only brother.

scott

Recently, I was channel flipping and saw another clip for the  new Mad Max movie. I may go check it out.

If I do, I’ll remember to put the arm up.

(our favorite clips, when Homer was going broke on the swear jar):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hffuTx-t_AA

 

The Awaiting Room

 

The sterile, white walls of the UCLA Medical Center beckoned me through her emergency room doors again recently.

Only this time, for once, I got to see the behemoth vertically, with a peripheral view.

Normally, it’s the horizontal perspective of fluorescent lights you enjoy from the gurney. But I was there with friends who had to visit the new ER, a gleaming, $ zillion wonder of byzantine architecture. Infinite PR has heralded the state-of-the-art campus, which features valet parking and customer satisfaction surveys.

But, as Maude says, aesthetic appreciation always takes a little time. So I can’t really give an honest report, having relied on it for so long. There’s a conflict of interest. I will say, however: The lighting is terrific.

And in observing the place instead of puking  on it,  I came to a couple realizations that I probably knew in the back of my mind. But this time, they could not help but find their way front.

The first: You should be able to opt out of jury service, but only if you agree to spend that time in an emergency room. It would not only give people an option to not bathe in legal molasses; this community service would actually improve the community.

How could it not, to watch a parade of real life? I will concede this to fate: It is brutal, merciless and often unfair. But it’s impartial. The destitute and the destined alike arrive through same doors, face the same gray horizon. Spend some quality time there, and we may even be less inclined to lament our lives as a living hell. Though I try not to be pollyanic.

waiting room sketch

The second: When a family is convicted of Illness, the defendant is often less harshly punished than the witnesses.

You realize it in the faces of families awaiting health news. When you’re the one sick, your one job is simple: feel better.

When you are among the Concerned, you can face a much tougher sentence. To make someone else feel hopeful; to be a support beam and not a crutch; to not cry in the middle of random conversations. Or, worse still, to attempt the impossible: Accepting you have so little say in the life you brought into this world.

Yet, look closely, and you can make out real beauty, too. A mother who thinks nothing of a 10-hour admission wait; A father willing to challenge armed men to get a child due attention. The strength of conviction.

As I said, I’m no more an expert on architecture than I am in Spanish, or cooking, or household repair, or anything else that’s actually useful in real life.

But there’s no denying the building lighting really is terrific. Especially when it illuminates the world inside the building.

Makes No Difference Who You Are

 

I was at Disneyland for the Fourth of July (or, as dogs refer to it, Annual Armageddon Day). And while normally I chafe at Disney’s corporate worldview and misogynist fairy tales in perpetuity, I get why the Mouse House boasts that it’s the happiest place on earth.

If you’re the right age, perhaps it is.

Sitting on the ledge of a fountain in downtown Disney in Anaheim, I saw a dad walking his son, perhaps three, to the water to toss in a coin and make a wish.

He handed a penny to the boy — dressed head to toe in a tiny Los Angeles Angels baseball uniform — and told him to make a wish. The boy gazed at the cent, new and tangerine shiny.

penny

“Make a wish and throw it in,” Dad said.

Without hesitation, the child hurled it into the fountain. Then he teetered perilously over the ledge to look at the shimmering coin floor, at least half of which was silver.

Dad tottered the boy back from the fountain before it became a mini swimming pool. He stooped behind his son, and wrapped a hand around him and over his stomach, speaking into his ear.

“Do you know what a wish is?” dad asked. The boy shook his head.

“A wish is something you want,” the dad said, rummaging for another penny. “Take this, think of something you want, and toss in the coin. Maybe it will come true.”

You could almost see the light bulb go off. And I realized I was witnessing a child learning how to wish. What a human experience. How many times would he exercise this new skill, to daydream? And for what will he pine, aside from being a Big Leaguer? Bringing a stuffed animal to life? calvinLiving in Disneyland? And in years to come; falling in love? Getting into school? Being a father?

One thing was certain: Dad had better keep a pocketful of change from this day forward. Because whenever they pass a fountain, kid’s gonna want wishing moolah.

Clearly, he got the concept.  Dad asked if he understood. Kid nodded like a stoner at a Metallica concert. Yes, yes, yes. Now where’s that penny?

Dad put it into his boy’s hand. Kid hesitated for a second, closed his fingers and looked at his tiny clench. And concentrated. Furrowed his brows while he decided on a wish, as if the wrong one could bring calamity. He drew his arm back, more assured this time.

“I want more money!” he yelled, throwing the coin twice as deep into the fountain this time.

Dad stood up and turned around. He dropped his hand, extending an index finger. Kid reached over his head and clasped the finger as he had the Lincoln head. They walked back to a family of a half dozen.

“You know,” the dad said. “Sometimes I wish for that, too.”