The Little Things

I've been a fan of Bruce Willis ever since Moonlighting, but not being a particular fan of action movies, I hadn't see Die Hard until tonight.

Of course, any movie about terrorists is seen through the prism of 9-11, but I think I've gotten pretty good at setting that aside in order to see an older movie for the individual bit of fluff that it's supposed to be.

Can't do it with Die Hard, though.

Cop gets to carry his gun on the plane? Jarring, but kinda amusing in a "ain't it funny how different things used to be?" way. Set it aside, keep watching, and you'll lose yourself in the movie.

Terrorists blow up an office building (even if it is just the roof), complete with stuff raining from the sky onto the people below?

Not so amusing. And not really all that entertaining, even if the good guys win in the end.

Kinda makes me wish I'd seen Die Hard... before. I bet it was a ton of fun--must've been, because it made Willis a superstar. But I can't tell, 'cause I can't see it with a pre-9/11 mind.

I suppose one gets used to the big changes and the big losses of innocence.. we develop emotional armor against the ways we all think and live differently since then, the images of the battlefield, the names, the endlessly-reverberating consequences. It all still hurts, each story tears at the heart and brings tears... but they don't shock us anymore. Maybe we have learned to expect them?

But the little things... they sneak up on you... Like a movie that sets you up so perfectly to root for the all-too-human hero, to scoff at the idiot FBI agents, too cheer as the good guys swagger off into the figurative sunset in a limousine with everything wrapped up in a pretty bow... but it all clangs so terribly off key, now.

You don't feel like cheering... because a perfect-pitch film from 1988 doesn't hit the same notes in your psyche anymore, doesn't make the same connections.

Because the good guys don't always win. And terrorists who blow up office buildings are a little too real. It's not escapist entertainment anymore.

The little things... the little ways that prove the changes... It's harder to have armor for them.

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Geaux Saints! *cringe*

As a Chargers fan, it pains me to write this but I have to give credit where credit is due... ;)

From a resident of Louisiana who forwarded this to me: This is being circulated all over New Orleans. FYI the Saints also did Rehabbing with the Troops through WWP & there was NO PR for it. The guys even came to town preseason and not a news story. That is how it should be sometimes!

Here are more reasons to be a Saints fan. CJ is the son of a VP at my company who wrote the email below. CJ was seriously wounded in Afghanistan and as you’ll read in the email below, has been in Walter Reed for a very long time and has endured many surgeries. When the Saints went to visit Walter Reed after leaving the White House, they heard about the Louisiana native and were all excited to meet him and all spent a very long time with him. We look at the Saints as a big deal, but even after just meeting the president and being honored as champs, they all recognized and knew that CJ is the real hero.

(Original email below:)

Attached are a few pictures from yesterday. New Orleans Saints came to Walter Reed after their visit to the White House. Notice a couple of things:

1. CJ is standing in each picture. Since Saturday he has worn his shoes all day, walked everywhere (Saturday was 1st time he has worn shoes and walked more than 5 steps in 53 days), and refuses to get in his bed during the day. He is getting stronger physically which is going along with his mental and spiritual strength which has been there all along.

2. Color in his face is back and he has gained back about 15 of the 28 lbs he lost.

1. – CJ and Drew Brees
2. – CJ and Coach Payton
3. – CJ and defensive line
4. – CJ and Robin

The Saints were very gracious. If you are a fan, you can be very proud of the class they showed. Hospital staff said they spent more time there than anyone ever has. They told Robin CJ was special to them because he is from Louisiana .

They really went out of their way. They all signed his flag and one of them gave him a Saints hat and the rest signed when they came to see him. Coach Payton gave us his cell number and invited us to spend a weekend in New Orleans as their guests when CJ gets back to Mississippi .

Drew Brees must have signed 20 things and gave them to him. The highlight for us was when CJ gave Drew Brees his Wounded Warrior hat and Drew promised to wear it on the sidelines. He said he would get fined by the NFL for wearing it and he would make sure the fine was donated to the Wounded Warrior Project. THEN he asked for CJ’s autograph.

Not a bad day! I guess I am going to have to become a Saints fan!





Become a Saints fan? Never!!

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Brothers

When a guy is wounded downrange, the medics often write medications and diagnoses directly on his skin, or on pieces of tape affixed to his clothing. This way medical personnel down the line immediately know important information about his care as he is transfered through the combat medical system. Click through for context.

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Righteous Anger?

I've been feeling drawn back into blogging, and I think this finally pushed the right buttons...

Lex wrote about a massage he received yesterday:

At some point it was revealed that I’d been in the Navy, and retired. This is something of which I am perhaps unseemly proud. There was an almost imperceptible pause in her ministrations, before she asked, almost casually, “Have you ever killed anyone?”

Just reading that, I gasped a little in surprise, amazed at her rudeness.

I took a moment to reply, before responding, “This is not a question we ask even of each other.” Nor was this a conversation I wanted to be in.

Her answer was a satisfied, almost triumphal grunt: “Exactly.” As though some point had been proven.

I sighed to myself softly, decided to let it go.

“I’m a pacifist,” she went on. “I don’t swallow any of it, Iraq. But my sister was talking about how many soldiers joined for college money. I never had any college money. And they knew that they might die.”

There are two guaranteed ways to make me see red instantly--hurt a child, or impugn/attack a veteran simply for who he is. I was seeing red as I continued to read. A shameful part of me was almost a little excited, alert for the crushing verbal blow I knew Lex could deliver, or the air-tight argument he would offer up next to decimate her silly statements in a single sentence.

But instead he ended up somewhere entirely different.

And I thought that maybe I needed to re-examine a post of which I'd always been a bit proud, because we're all trying to come to grips with something...

Hearing Bellavia talk about those parents made my heart hurt, made me angry. Kudos to him for obviously having the sense and the support system to not let such treatment get him down. But shame on those who use a misplaced sense of moral superiority to mask their own weakness, ignorance and fundamental lack of humanity.

Awfully judgmental of me, isn't it?

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