The General Orders a Pizza

It was a couple months ago. October, I think. Before the Democratic primaries kicked into high gear. Some friends and I were enjoying pizza and beer at Patsy's on the Upper West Side. Good pizza. Good beer.

A guy walks in, a group of people around him. That's the first thing that tells you he's important: he's in the center of the group. It rotates around him as he walks, but maintains him in the center, not too tough to do on an empty sidewalk, but a bit of a challenge in the narrow aisles between tables at Patsy's. Putting that kind of effort into it, into maintaining the rotating human shield around this guy, that's a sure indicator of importance. The other is his posture, a plumb-line-from-crown-to-ass chiropractic achievement that calls to my mind the phrase "ramrod straight," even though I don't know what a ramrod is.

General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, has come for pizza.

At that moment in time, I have no idea who General Wesley Clark is. I don't read the newspapers, or watch the news. I'm not a registered Democrat. I'm not a member of NATO. My friends, however, at least watch the news, and are duly impressed by the sudden appearance of the General. They fill me in. I am duly impressed that, in this day and age, someone can officially be the Supreme Commander of anything. It sounds like a title from STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. One that the Klingons would use.

The thought then occurs to me: how exactly does a four-star general, a man who could have formerly, on a whim, order the total conquest and subjagation of, say, Finland, order a pizza? It certainly doesn't seem like a task the General would delegate to one of his flunkies, something of such importance. I mean, it's not just his own pizza he's ordering, but for the entire table, a party of at least a dozen people. That kind of responsibility is something that just isn't left to subordinates.

I have to imagine the order as one of the most militaristic kind, fired off with the deadly serious stacato of a machine gun: "Four pies. One pepperoni-sausage. One mushroom-green pepper. One white. One plain. Four pitchers Michelob. ASAP." A far cry, certainly, from my own table's ragged, rambling suggestions of what we might like, should the waitress be so kind, interrupted by the occasional pathetic request of the "Could we have half-anchovies on that?" sort. There's no such sloppiness at the General's table, I'm sure, no dissention, no doubt.

The tables at Patsy's are small, and the pies are large. The arrival of three vague pizzas at our own table is an occasion fraught with panic and disorder, as the sorry remainder of the two large salads we'd ordered to whet our collective appetite are hastily divied up, the empty bowls first offered to the waitress' already occupied hands, then placed on the floor (the floor, I tell you!) for later retrieval. Water glasses are shoved aside to make room, one being upset in the process and subsequently flooding the southwestern quadrant of Table One, a disaster only magnified by an inadequate supply of napkins and the diversion of said table's occupants' attention by the pizzas whose very presence is wreaking such havok. This was a planned, anticipated event, and even still, the delivery is enough to cause pandemonium amongst our bewildered forces.

The General, I knew, was far better prepared. The salad was divided up on its arrival, minimizing the amount of time and space wasted on the presence of its overly large bowls. Glasses, both water and beer, were lined in neat, spit-shined rows, ready for inspection. Roles in the forthcoming operation would be assigned; training would be brief, but instructive. Orders would be issued. The insertion and deployment of four large pizzas onto three small, otherwise occupied tables, as daunting as it might seem, would present little challenge to the man who invaded Haiti, who defeated Milosovec, who ended the war in Bosnia. Operation Pie-in-the-Sky would be one in which every occupant of the table would be proud, indeed, honored to take part.

I find myself fervently hoping that the General doesn't walk past our table. Indeed, my sudden but overwhelming shame at my own table and its occupants is now starting to seriously detract from what had been, prior to the General's landing, a perfectly enjoyable dining experience.

Luckily, at this apex of my dismay, Michael Moore, of slumped spine and not-so-fit bearing, comes in with a severe, frowning woman who could only be his mother, sits down at the table next to ours, and proceeds to lower his head and stare at his plate in the instantly recognizable shame of a boy forced to dine in public with a disapproving parent, and I start to feel much better.

"Young JEEEZUSS!"

On a positive note, boffo B.O. for Mel Gibson's BraveChrist pic will be a nice push for the television series being developed by Celvyn and myself, in which a young pubescent Jesus comes to terms with his powers and his mysterious origins while hanging around with his best friends, the slightly shady Judas and the perpetually indecisive Thomas, fawning over nubile cheerleader Mary Magdalene, avoiding the ire of school principal Pontius Pilate, and occasionally dueling it out with arch-nemesis Satan, all the while guided along by his dog. Which talks. Because his dog is God.

Think SMALLVILLE. Except with Jesus.

Casting is underway, with Tom Wopat considering the part of Jesus' adopted father, Joseph and Margot Kidder tentatively cast as his wife, Mary. Show title is to be determined: I'm pushing for THE YOUNG JESUS ADVENTURES, while Celvyn prefers NAZARETH, which I think lacks the punch of YOUNG JESUS and sounds too much like a miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain. Theme song by Stryper.

Of the episodes scripted so far, a particular favorite of mine is one in which Jesus and pals go to the beach, where a confused Jesus discovers that he can't actually go for a swim in the waters of Lake Galilee, because he's somehow unable to stop walking on top of them.

I'm telling you, this thing is practically writing itself.

Well, That Sucks

The UK's Observer has reported that the Pentagon, not exactly the paragon of environmental protection, has issued a secret report to President Bush stating that, in less than twenty years, drastic climate change could result in a global catastrophe causing the death of millions.

Bummer.

One would hope that an administration, even one with as abysmal an environmental record as George W. Bush's, particularly in regards to global warming, will take this rather distressing news as sign of a need for real change, and not as pre-publicity for the latest disaster flick by the makers of INDEPENDENCE DAY. Of course, one would also hope that an administration would have accepted the reams of scientific data demonstrating that global warming is a reality sooner than 2002. And one would further hope that an administration, on finally admitting that global warming was fact and not a bed-time story told to scare by oil and gas lobbyists to scare their children, would implement a policy to decrease the greenhouse emissions causing global warming, not increase them.

One would hope.

Me, I'm hoping to not spend my fiftieth birthday struggling to survive in a postapocalpytic war zone.

The Miracle Worker

I would like to take this opportunity to, once again, express my great fondness for Kurt Russell. Who else, save he, could not only respectably wear the early-Eighties-Ted-Koppel hairdo that he displays in his new film, but make you forget it completely as he pulls off a performance so subtle and nuanced and assured that one might think it was, well, miraculous, especially coming from Kurt Russell?

But, odd as it may seem to say re: the guy who did 3000 MILES TO GRACELAND and ESCAPEs FROM NEW YORK and L.A., subtle and nuanced is what he does best; Kurt accomplishes with a look what most actors do with a page of dialogue. And while he does do a fair bit of schlock to pay the rent (and, I'm convinced, for sheer fun), he does it well enough to not embarrass himself, keeping enough of a sense of humor about it to make you feel he's in on the joke with you. What he's best with, though, is the role of the extraordinary ordinary man, the everyguy you'd never notice if he hadn't been dropped in the middle of an exceptional situation. The guy driving cross-country with his wife to start anew in California in BREAKDOWN; the solitary helicopter pilot just doing his time in a remote research station in THE THING. So it stands to reason that a movie like MIRACLE, whose whole raison d'etre is the ordinary-doing-the-extraordinary thing, would be the perfect place for Kurt to shine. Which he does.

And the movie shines right along with him, doing a great job of not only making what must be one of the least aesthetically-pleasing eras of American history, the early Eighties, visually interesting, but of making one of the most recycled cinematic sub-genres, the overcoming-the-odds sports flick, incredibly enjoyable and, even more surprisingly, moving. Yes, the crowd chants "U.S.A!" during the climactic final game, and yes, red, white, and blue are all present in abundance, and yes, this kind of overt patriotism should seem even more hackneyed than usual in these cynical times. But you're not in your cynical times; you're in 1980, and you're watching a group of college kids beat the legendary Soviet hockey team in the Winter Olympics, and you're seeing a crowd of people who haven't had much to cheer about lately joyously run for the ice, and you're noticing a tired, overwhelmed middle-aged hockey coach in the middle of it all, a guy who kind of resembles Kurt Russell, looking around wildly for his wife like a drowning man looking for a life preserver, and after he sees her, after he manages to convey seven months of pent-up emotion with a single look, walking into a deserted hallway so he can get a grip on what he's just done. Which is make history. Which is achieve his dream. Which is do the extraordinary with the ordinary. Which is what Kurt Russell happens to do best.

Transitions

Your first was college, like most everyone else's. A new place, a new face. New people, who knew nothing about you. You could be anything. You could be nothing.

What you were, was weird, bizarre, incongruous, strange. You said odd things. You did odd things. You were a freak. What you were, was you.

You met one of your best friends that first day in college. You made other friends that you'll know for the rest of your life. You did good. And you moved on.

Not just on: you moved across the planet. You went to Australia. Midway through college, trying to figure out what the hell you were doing with your life, trying to figure out just what you were going to be, you decided to take a trip to the lost continent to see if you could find just what it was that was lost.

You found it. You found spontaneity. You found random acts of chance. You found the life that could be lived if you went down the up escalator, and went swimming in the ocean at midnight after a storm, and danced like a madman while everyone else stood around and stared, and ran across the Sydney Harbor bridge with your friend on your back and the world at your feet. You found life the way it could be, and should be, if only you would just fucking relax and enjoy yourself.

And you met another one of your best friends, a guy you'd eventually stand next to at his wedding, the first day you walked into your new house in a suburb of Sydney and threw your duffel bag on your bed. And you made other friends who would stay in your heart, and stay there still, and who will be forever welcome at any place you choose to call your home. Did good there, too. And you moved on.

You finished college and moved to New York. The Big City. For a guy who thought crowded frat parties in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania were the worst of the worst, moving to a city of eight square miles and ten million people on a good day was asking for trouble. You knew you would hate it. You had to do it, to work in movies; you had to sleep on a couch or a futon or an air mattress or whatever the hell you could find, and wake up at four AM to make the call time on the film you were working on (for free, no less), and you knew you would absolutely HATE it.

And, of course, you loved it. And, of course, you met one of your best friends, a guy who you knew would, and who will, stick with you, like all your good friends, for the rest of your life.

And in those first months in this new city that you absolutely knew you should hate, if only you weren't having such a good time, you met a girl who became your boss, and your friend, and the love of your life, and your wife, in that order.

Needless to say, buddy, you did pretty damn great on that one.

You're moving again soon. You're going across the country to try to make your dreams come true. You don't know what to expect. You don't know anyone there. You don't have a job. You don't even have a place to LIVE yet. You could hate it. It could be a total disaster. You don't know. You're going anyway.

But I have to tell you, my friend: I think you're going to be okay.