Category Archives: Muddled Musings

Armed And Really Pissed

Sønderborg  

Next week, I turn 50, a more passionate goal than I care to admit.

And as I’ve neared that marathon tape, I’ve found myself upbeat, centered, ready to tackle the next 50 a more wizened, patient soul. A better man.

Then the American Association of Retired Persons had to try to squat on the moment.

The card arrived last week, though I’m still, technically, 49. I have no idea how they figured out my birthday. They never sent a card before.

But there It was. In my mail, red as a railroad crossing and sealed with the care of an American Express Platinum card. My buddy Dan, born a week after, sent a smoke signal warning. His arrived the same day, and he texted what loomed.

IMG_4113

I guess I knew It was coming. But, as a boy, I remember thinking: “That’s an old people’s card. You don’t get that unless you’re a hundred. Or at least born in the olden days, like before 1965.

And I began to wonder: Do people apply the moment they are eligible, like 16-year-olds do with a driver’s license? Or is it an admission of wrinkles, a truce with Father Time? Not necessarily a defeat. In a way, the card could say: “You made it. You survived this merciless world and daytime TV for a half century.

And at what point does our wisdom clash with ego? Eventually, it seems, the pragmatic must overcome the proud. Millions of Americans decide that, while having to admit we qualify for a senior’s advantages, that is a pretty good discount at Motel 6.

So I started looking into statistics. What’s the typical age of an enrollee? A member?

Not surprisingly, there are few hard numbers. When you Google AARP, you’re inundated with analytics and advertisements about the benefits of just a $19.99 annual fee. As a reporter, I realized I could simply drop a note to the folks at AARP and ask. I had the address, postage paid, right there on the return envelope.

Then I remembered I had ripped into the paperwork into fine shreds, and sheared the card in half. If I could, I probably would have clipped It into 49 shards.

Ok, I overreacted. But I’m just forty nine. Blame it on the rebellion of youth.

A Rose(Bowl), By Any Other Name

 

The interesting thing about having the email address sbowles@gmail.com is that you realize how many people are named Bowles.

I used to think the surname weird, if not unique. God how I wished my ancestors had dropped the “e” in my last name. I can’t tell you how many times people have read my name and queried aloud: “Scott…Bowels?”

But apparently that’s not a unique lament. I get many emails not intended for me, but for someone with a slight variation on the address, like s.bowles. But in the ethernet chatter, the character(s) get dropped, and I’ll get an email meant for a Sally Bowles, or Stuart Bowles.

Normally the errors are humorous, if not a frightening statement on the human condition:

Sally, thanks for signing up for fat camp.

Stuart, thanks for your interest in penis enlargement pills.

But today it took a briefly menacing turn. At 7:25 a.m., I got an email from a guy named Mat Krotki, the president of PDG-GUS, a wheelchair manufacturer that touts its corporate humanity toward the disabled. But his email betrayed little humanity. I looked through the thread and saw that he meant to send it so s?bowles@gmail.com (I don’t want to add to the world chaos).

Dear Steven Bowles :

Your invoice for the decuctible on your recent claim appears below.
Payment is due upon receipt.

Thank you for your business – we appreciate it very much.
Mat M. Krotki | President | PDG-GUS

bad

I didn’t know what to make of it. Steven? Was that a clerical error? I do face some insurance issues, but I was up to date on my deductibles. Though it’s hard to keep track of all the forms and bills, probably intentionally.

The follow-up email growled:

Hi Steven,

This invoice is severely past due.
This will be my last written attempt to collect payment of this invoice.
If you choose not to respond, you  will leave us no choice but to escalate
our collection action to another level.
I look forward to your timely response.

Thanks
Mat M. Krotki | President | PDG-GUS

worse

When I realized the emails weren’t meant for me, I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I got pissed. Then I came to peace.

The anger came from the letters’ corporate tone. The first email had the obligatory polite predicates: “Thank you for your business.” “We appreciate it very much.”

The second showed the business’s and man’s true colors (which usually expose themselves in rain, not sunshine). “This will be my last notice.” “If you choose not to respond, you will leave us no choice but to escalate…” Not even a period at the end of “Thanks.” (Sorry, the word nerd in me won’t allow intentionally poor grammar.)

The peace came when I realized I could turn this into a personal lesson. That how, when you act in haste, anger, greed, from your power perch — when you act from a dark place — you can make small mistakes that balloon into something you wish you’d noticed more. That little things, if left unguarded, have aspirations to go big.

Still, Mat Krotki (love that name) had such an aggressive tenor to his note that it got under my skin, even if it weren’t intended for my flesh. He could have said something human, like “Please get back to me, Steve. This is important.” Instead, the guy had to include a passive aggressive addendum: “I look forward to your timely response.”

So I sent him one, at 7:43 a.m.:

Wrong guy, dickhead.

response

All Hail the Dancing Damned

I can remember five dreams in my life. Two were pleasant, two were unpleasant, and I can’t figure out the fifth after eight years of analyzing.

The best one, though, atones for any nightmare.

I had it when I was in Washington, DC, my last stint as a crime writer. After my stint in Detroit as a crime writer. A friend once suggested the dream was borne of reporting on street existence for so long. I dismissed it, but perhaps she was correct.

In the dream, I am walking through a familiar-yet-alien block in a downtown city. People are bumping, brushing, bustling past one another. No one apologizes for the collisions.

Amidst the chaos, I see a black man dancing in the middle of the street, keeping tune with a song only he can hear. Full dance moves. Impressive. Certain. No partner, no care who sees. Older, with hair as gray as uncertainty. homeless man

A woman sees the street waltz, and shakes her head in disgust. “That’s awful,” she mutters. “He shouldn’t be dancing in the street.” She has a Southern accent, though I don’t know why. Perhaps because so many bible thumpers below the Mason-Dixon still consider joy a sin.

Then, I hear a man’s voice in response, though I never see his face. “He’s not dancing,” the voice says. “He’s running from heaven.”

I always puzzled over who it was I pictured dancing. Now I’m thinking it may have been Derrick T. Tuggle.

Tuggle was a part-time security guard who was to appear in The Black Keys’ video Lonely Boy. He thought he had won the lottery by scoring a brief scene in the three-minute movie, shot outside a rundown motel in California. The concept: Tuggle would play the hotel manager, accept the room key from the musical duo and hand it to a group of nubile female dancers, who would provide a sexual undertone to the video.

But as the crew prepared to shoot, the director noticed Tuggle, listening to the song, bobbing his head to the beat and dancing ever so slightly as he stood on his mark. The director was intrigued. He asked Tuggle if he could dance on camera and cue.

“Sure,” Tuggle said. “I can dance. Everyone can dance!”

Tuggle asked for an hour to memorize the lyrics. He thought of dancers who made an impression: John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever  fever and Pulp Fiction fiction; Carlton Banks’ moves on The Fresh of Bel-Air.

He mentally choreographed a dance to accompany the lyrics.

Then the cameras rolled. And in one take, all other dancers were sent home. Within a week of the video’s release, 250,000 people watched on YouTube. Today, it has more than 44 million views.

There’s nothing to the video, really. It’s one, uninterrupted shot as Tuggle plays disco mime outside the motel office. It’s a cinematographic nightmare, as the camera catches sunlight dappling a receding hairline. There’s even a goof at the 30-second mark (check out the office window).

But the director made the canny call to embrace imperfection. There’s something hypnotic to its simplicity. And enthralling, as Tuggle becomes a modern-day Tony Manero, a real-life Vincent Vega, a contemporary Carlton. Watch as his sleeves unroll in the frenzy.

Tuggle doesn’t seem to care. He seems the type perfectly comfortable dancing in the middle of the street, critics and tongue-cluckers be damned.

Keep running from heaven, Mr. Tuggle. And thank you for the sinful joy.