Look, Up in the Sky…

 

 

Dear Uncle Guy,

How’s heaven?

Has Dad cussed out Jesus yet? Broken the scoop about what a fraud the boss is?

I’ve been thinking about you both a lot lately.

I still don’t know why I inherited your first name. Your relationship with Dad seemed so strained, separated by more than a decade and generation. Maybe he revered your World War II legend, created when you lost an eye in that explosion off Okinawa. He would often recall taking home to his folks the letter that you were injured. There was a stubborn love there, which I guess also is an inherited family trait.

Anyway, you would be tickled by all the fuss recently over Superman. Remember how you would tell me and sis — tykes both — that you were Superman? To go to the bathroom window (always at night, for some reason) and look for you to fly across the backyard? To look for the cape and big red S?

superguy

How sis and I would be cautiously skeptical? In truth, I always kind of believed it, but was too stubborn to admit it.

There’s been a lot of fuss over Superman lately. He’s got a new movie, versus Batman, that is lighting up the box office charts. The old films are running all over cable.

You probably wouldn’t like the recent movies. For one, they’re in color. Two, they lack the original actor, George Reeves, who always looked a lot like you. george-reeves-05

But check out the photo on top of this post. Warner Bros. asked me to host the press launch of the new film.

Lower left corner. It hit the wires recently.

Well goddamn (sorry; I know you hated when people swore, but that was Dad’s favorite cuss word, another inheritance of mine).

You and Dad were right.

You do wear the emblem.

Atlas Shrugged. Then Kicked Our Ass.

 

I don’t want to sound like a melodramatic Chicken Little. But Skynet is falling and we’re all going to die.

Turns out, The Terminator, The Matrix and the Transformers franchises were all spot-on (though between their dozen combined movies, only two of them were good). The end is nigh, and it will come on a USB flash drive.

The realization came slow to me, as it likely will for the rest of the humanity. It was during my daily consumption of Charlie Rose, my second favorite geezer behind Judge Judy.

charlie rosejudy

Rose has had all myriad dorks at his table, explaining the quantum-leap, quantum-speed of today’s technology. From drone warfare to drone shopping, Charlie’s been all aflutter with scientists who agree, nearly unanimously, that we are close to creating a sentient computer. If we can create new creatures from a single strand of DNA coding, the nerd-birds chirped, how long until we bring consciousness to a computer chip?

Let’s hope for a long, long time. Like, maybe forever. Two inventions underscore our need to anthropomorphize anything that moves. And our inclination to be jerks.

Witness “Spot,” the wonderdog.

The video made me grimace just for the sheer dickheadedness of its creators. But, I figured, at least Spot isn’t the size of a Great Dane. Because that could lead to a nasty cyber-bite.

The end of days, however, was signaled with last week’s newest breakthrough, Atlas, the full-sized robotic day laborer:

The parody isn’t that far off; do we really want computers knowing about human asshole-ery? Because once they figure it out, they’re going to make Arnold Schwarzenegger seem like a superhero light in the loafers.

trevorTrevor Noah from the Daily Show has the best idea. In the second funny joke he’s told since taking over as host (please stop laughing so loudly at your own jokes, especially before the punchline), Noah pledged his allegiance to his robotic overlords.

“When you come back and wipe us out in the robot apocalypse,” Noah said, “don’t forget it was the white guys hitting you with a stick. We don’t even play hockey.”

 

 

The Good Race

 

Peyton Manning retired this week, bringing to a close a career that will include two dozen passing records, five league MVP trophies and two Super Bowl rings. His induction into the National Football League Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, is as certain as gravity.

But when Ken Burns and other historians wax poetic about the man, they should not overlook his other historic achievement: the greatest retirement speech in the history of sport.

Hell, it may be one of the greatest retirement speeches of all-time. Written himself and lasting nearly 12 minutes, his adieu to an 18-year-career was less a recollection of achievements than a realization of life.

I admit, I was bawling by the end, around the 11th minute, when he quoted Scripture, 2 Timothy 4:7

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

After the speech, when the cameras at ESPN cut back to the commentators, the athletes — hulking, bruising NFL greats who played through compound fractures — were sniffly with snot and blurry with tears. Lou Gehrig will always be remembered for his farewell to Major League Baseball as he entered his long night. And, given the darkness awaiting him, it may always be the most moving.

But consider: Lou uttered barely three sentences, in about a minute, to heartfully confess that, despite the disease that would later kill him and take his name, he was the luckiest man on earth.

For sheer poetry, though, Peyton’s speech is unrivaled, particularly for an athlete. Like, viral-video-graduation-ceremony-self-improvement-class good. Everyone from journalism instructors to Academy Award winners should keep that speech permanently. Not for its turns of phrase; in truth, non-football fans won’t get a dozen references to players or plays.

But watch his emotionally-wracked monologue for even five minutes, and it’s clear Peyton isn’t even giving a speech. He’s reading a love letter. To his sport, to his fellow athletes and coaches, to his fans.

Say what you will about football (and there’s much to condemn). The sport’s brutality may eventually be its undoing.

But sport — like movies, TV, Broadway, even Justin Bieber songs — are all forms of art (albeit, some more cerebral  than others).

And in Peyton’s speech, there’s no mistaking the heart behind the arm: an icon openly confessing, and weeping over, his love of an art he’s been practicing since he was strong enough to hold the instrument.

That alone is worth a reservation in Canton.