As I write this I'm listening to the sound of grumbling thunder pass by the window near my cubicle and the lady who now shares the office with myself and a few other co-workers is yipping like an injured chihuahua every time there's a boom or a streak of lightning illuminates the sky, and it is taking every ounce of self control that I have not to tell her to eat a bag of dicks and get back to being quiet while she works on whatever spreadsheet or word document she's supposed to be slogging through like the rest of us. Until sometime last week I did not even know the phrase "eat a bag of dicks" existed, nor would I have thought about using it so freely and easily in the middle of the working day, but until sometime last week I only had a very cursory knowledge of stand-up comedian, writer, director, TV star and hero Louis C.K. This is not sometime last week.
I'm a very amateur comedian, or what some would call a hack, and I'm fine with that. I go to the occasional coffee shop or cafe here or there and peddle my jokes to an unsuspecting group of strangers who are usually too involved in their mocha-chinos or laptops to give me, or the other struggling comics, the time of day. Which is fine, it's our fault for not being compelling or interesting enough to grab their attention and hold on tight, and right now I'm in the middle of a cosmic struggle to find my own voice and write and perform material that will do exactly that. It's really f_cking hard. From week to week performance to performance I've dabbled in everything from politics, race, economic struggles, stupid fart jokes, an occasional impression and a whole lot of other bullshit that would make Carrot Top look like George Carlin by comparison. (Yes, I am that bad, or at least I think I am) I never once thought comedy would be easy, but I never once imagined it would be so hard to do something that seems to be so natural to me when I'm at work, home or out with friends. (Yes, I'm the guy who listened when his best friend and girlfriend told him he should give stand-up a try.)
As per usual, when I'm feeling a little lost in the wilderness, I put on "The Comedians of Comedy Movie" and sit and watch Patton Oswalt, Maria Bamford, Brian Posehn and a pre-fame Zach Galifianakis go through the grind of traveling from city to city performing their unique brand of hilarious comedy. Now, I've seen this movie maybe a dozen times and almost every time there's something I catch that I missed before that allows me to shake the cobwebs away and get back to being somewhat funny on an intermittent basis; which is what happened this time around, sometime last week. During a radio interview filmed for the movie, when asked which comics people may not know about that they should, Patton Oswalt said the name Louis C.K. immediately and without hesitation, and I thought to myself, "Okay, I've got to really get into this guy to find out what the deal is," adding, "for real this time."
It's not that I haven't known about Mr. C.K. for the past few years, because I have. I just didn't really give a shit because I was so into myself that I thought, "yeah, yeah cheap laughs and crude humor, I get it and it's not for me," but I wasn't paying attention to the material I was just hearing the language and seeing this middle aged, pudgy, red head on stage getting huge laughs from an audience that I assumed probably consisted of red necks and dip-shits. My second attempt to "discover" Mr. C.K needed a different boost in a different direction and as luck would have it I came upon an interview he did with The A.V Club about his new show "Louie" (which airs Tuesday nights at 11 on FX).
I missed the first couple episodes of "Louie" so I felt left out and in the dark, but to my extreme delight and surprise the first two episodes popped up on Hulu and, holy shit, the man's a f_cking genius. "Louie" is more or less two short films with some of Mr. C.K's stand-up interspersed throughout and it is the best new comedy to come to television since the British version of "The Office," and I am brutally addicted to it. I find myself feeling withdrawal symptoms when too much time passes between the episodes, so I went and bought all that are available on iTunes and I annoy my girlfriend by watching them as frequently as humanly possible. "Louie" speaks to me on some strange, incomprehensible level that is sometimes a little scary to admit, because I don't know what it is about it that makes me feel like I'm shooting heroin and listening to Thelonious Monk on vinyl each time I see an episode, but it does and I do not plan on attending rehab anytime soon. I would gladly sell my body on the streets for nickels and dimes if it meant I got to go home and watch more "Louie," it really is that good.
From "Louie" I went to the internet and sought out every piece of Mr. C.K.'s stand-up that I could find and found myself respecting and listening to him on a very different level than the old, comedy snob me had a few years ago. His jokes, while littered with the foulest words imaginable have very little if nothing to do with the language and everything to do with the context it is used in and I am more than amazed that some of his more raunchy sets have gotten huge laughs from my girlfriend who, normally, doesn't find that sort of thing funny, but Mr. C.K. is so good it's unbelievable and anything close to normal. One piece, displayed at the end of last weeks episode of "Louie," where Mr. C.K. tells a story about his cousin visiting New York City and seeing a homeless person for the first time is above brilliant and should be studied until the end of time as the pinnacle of what comedy should aspire to be, and with my obsessive nature firmly dictating that I needed to consume as much of his stand-up as possible I rented his 2008 stand-up special "Louis C.K.: Chewed Up" and, to my knowledge, it's the hardest I've ever laughed for an hour of my life.
From there I worked backwards and watched "Louis C.K.: Shameless" and anything else I could find on YouTube, and I have yet to be disappointed or left feeling like the person I watched is anything less than the funniest man alive. As much as I used to look up to guys like Patton Oswalt, David Cross and Zach Galifianakis as the ultimate leaders of the comedy revolution, I can say right now that I only did so out of my own ignorance of Louis C.K.; which is not to take way from the others I have mentioned, they are 3 of the best comedians in the world and they make me cry with laughter on a regular basis, but Mr. C.K. is just, well, special and maybe it's only me and I'm just an asshole, but I don't care. If you take anything away from this stupid blog post of mine, please let it be that you go and seek out Mr. C.K. and his television shows (he had a much praised sitcom on HBO called "Lucky Louie" that was canceled after 13 episodes; which I am waiting for to arrive in the mail via Netflix), stand-up comedy, movies and whatever else of his you can find, because it's just beyond description how f_cking good it is.
Somewhere along the way of my excessive, obsessive, borderline compulsive quest to track down everything Mr. C.K. has ever produced in the history of his life (Jesus Christ I'm entering stalker territory now, Mr. C.K. if you ever read this piece of shit, don't worry I'm not that crazy, just a huge fan) I found myself writing better jokes and speaking more confidently and more like myself than I ever have in the past; which I entirely attribute to seeing Mr. C.K. do his job and do it so well that it could do nothing but inspire me to go in my own direction and become my own comedian for the benefit of everything I do on stage and off. I've re-embraced my love of swearing without trying to tone down my act or make it overly crude and about shock value and all that; it's just how I talk and think and that's what people want to see, right? (Probably not)
In closing, welcome to the "I Like You...Hall of Fame" Mr. C.K., you are my new hero and I look forward to, hopefully, seeing you perform on stage and television for years and years to come. Thank You.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Goodbye, Old Friend.
*spoilers ahead, if you have not seen the finale of LOST please stop reading immediately!*
Since 2007 I have not been able to listen to Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" without becoming flooded by a tidal wave of conflicting emotions. I feel angry, happy, sad, nostalgically reminiscent, cynical, curious and disappointed. It all meshes together pretty well, and not too long after hearing the song I start to get the itch to hunker down and watch "The Sopranos" again for the second, third or millionth time. In my head I see Tony sitting in the booth at the diner waiting for his ungrateful -if not entirely righteous in their indignation- family make their way towards him amidst various shady characters that may or may not be about to shoot them all. Then, the abrupt cut to black, lack of audio, a brief moment of "what the hell just happened" and roll credits. Did I mention this happens every time? Well, it does, because "The Sopranos" was for me something akin to a religious experience. It wasn't that I loved watching mobsters shoot each other or anything like that; I didn't play the "who gets whacked this week" game with my friends. I loved the story, the characters, the moral ambiguity and the style it was all produced in. To this day, I have not seen a better television show before or since -yet "Mad Men" is starting to encroach on sacred ground, if you ask me- Tony and his glorified crew of New Jersey goombahs showed up on HBO 11 years ago. I miss "The Sopranos" almost every day. Where some people rant and rave about "The Wire" (and rightly so, from what I've heard and seen) there is just something about "The Sopranos" and the way it ended that has continued to make it an interesting show long past it's expiration date rolled on by.
For all the criticism the end of "The Sopranos" received from critics and fans alike, I've got a feeling the ending of "Lost" is going to be the one that might actually get people to throw hands in the street over differing opinions. It's just something about the fans of "Lost" that makes me think there is going to be a zeitgeist fueled backlash that may or may not cause meta-riots in the para-streets between all the different factions of fanboys and girls out there.
Where the ending of "The Sopranos" was challenging and required one to be of an open mind; the ending of "Lost" was like a watermelon, de-seeded and pre-sliced served up on a platter. They myriad enigmatic plot twists, story arcs and characters that the show had become known for and very rightly praised over were thrown away in favor of making the finale accessible and understandable even to the most casual fan. That, to me, is a vicious cop out that was completely and totally unnecessary for a show that had been such a game changer over the course of the past 6 years. Still, I can't say I hated it though, and in looking back over the history of the show I would be remiss if I didn't say there were some terribly klunky episodes that left me feeling like I'd wasted 45 minutes of my life looking at an emotionless, overly complicated mess (read: any "Kate-centric" episode... you all know they were terrible).
Sacrificing some quality for the sake of advancing the shows plot lines had been something I'd grown too complacent about over the years. I'd sigh at the end of a particularly ridiculous, out of context episode and remind myself that "Lost" is different and it's all leading towards something bigger -or more confusing- than anything else network TV has ever tried to accomplish, and for the most part that's exactly what the show did. It overreached and, at times, underachieved, but it was all ok because it was so freaking interesting and engrossing and the cheese actually tasted pretty good once you really got into the show. I didn't care how many times Kate got her own episode because I knew a Ben and Locke episode was around the corner to make up for it, and, hey, Kate was a pretty important part of the show (for a while), it's just that her character was less interesting to me than a tuft of grass on a lonely desert plain. I'm sure others out there would disagree with me vehemently, and that's their right and that's another aspect of "Lost" that made the show so unique and so groundbreaking.
The discussions, arguments and theories that swirled around "Lost" from the second the world first heard the smoke monster and saw the trees tremble in his wake during the pilot are like nothing television has ever seen before. Add in the allegory, allusion and metaphor that the show was jam packed with and there was so much interpretation left to the audience that it was almost impossible not to get sucked in and go beyond the weekly offerings. People, meaning rabid fans, would scour the internet and actually research the symbols and meanings and names of fictional things happening on a fictional show that took place on an island that, we now know, was some sort of mystical stop-gap that prevented evil from seeping out into the world and eventually destroying it. The writers played into this extremely well, leaving clues and hints and little Easter eggs tucked into scenes that the keen eyed fans would notice and obsess over. It was, honestly, the perfect show for the internet age and, shockingly, despite the instant gratification nature of the net generation, remained an utterly unsolvable mystery to the majority of the people who watched it week in and week out. Really, that's just amazing stuff when you put your thinking cap on and give it a good once over in your mind grapes.
I don't do recap write-ups, so I'll spare my sparse audience the tedium of a play-by-play in favor of touching upon some of the moving and more important moments of the finale that will have me thinking for the rest of my life.
First off, congratulations to Hurley for being named the island's protector, it was an entirely deserved moment and one that made me extremely happy despite the fact that I and the rest of the world did not get to see one single, solitary second of Hurley in charge other than him asking Ben to be his number 2. It was really astounding to see "the voice of the audience" get to take the reigns and become the new Jacob. As much as I said to myself over the course of the final season, "I wish it would be Hurley," I had little to no hope that it would really happen, but I was wrong and the world of "Lost" is a much better place for it. The actors (Jorge Garcia and Michael Emerson) were brilliant as usual, and the final scene when Hurley asks Ben to come inside the church before telling him he was a "good number 2" was really touching and, had it been between say, Sawyer and Sayid would have been much less ingratiating. This aspect of the finale I was super, super happy with (if you can't already tell).
Speaking of Sawyer...
... I have, since the first time James Ford said "sonofabitch" in an exasperated way, been an unabashed fan of the character and hugely impressed by the actor (Josh Holloway), and when he and Juliette finally re-met in the sideways-verse I lost control and started gulp-crying like a little gilr who just watched her pony get run over by an 18-wheeler. For a character that was so reserved and somewhat guarded throughout the entire run of the show, seeing him let go like that was more moving than I was prepared for. Even though, on the whole, I'm not the biggest fan of Juliette I wanted Sawyer to find happiness somewhere since the agony was as plain as the nose on his face when she died. It was nice to see him get what he wanted, even though he had to die to find it.
Right, by the way, the sideways-verse? Yeah, turns out that was some kind of holding pen for the characters until they made their way into the bright, shiny light or something. Ugh, I wanted to kick a small child when Christian Shepherd came in at the end and gave the heavy-handed, all to easy to stomach wrap up that explained what the hell was going on. It was just a stupid, gimmicky season long thing that was used to make the audience think something was happening when it really wasn't. To be blunt, it pissed me off in such a unique way that I'm still trying to come up with the correct phrasing; which I am, currently, failing at. I suppose for a show that has been so confusing a little levity and straightforwardness was needed, but I was hoping that wouldn't have been the case. I didn't need all the questions to be answered (and they weren't), but it would have been nice to see the ending be a little more ambiguous and, -sigh-, action packed instead of the bland, emotionless meeting in the church that bordered on shiny-town. I'll get over it, but it bugged me.
Honestly, everything else that happened in the finale was something... well, it was something. I can't put my finger on any other moments that had me jumping out of my seat or feeling really, truly compelled to care for what was happening onscreen, because it all felt sort of dead (no pun intended) about 45 minutes in. I have no clue why UnLocke was killed so early on when it seemed like the entire season was gearing up towards some sort of full out war between he and Jack's diminutive group of followers, but that didn't happen, it was an anti-climax punctuated by a pretty sweet jump-punch from Jack to UnLocke; which I mistook as the beginning of an awesome fight scene on a quivering, about to fall into the ocean cliff. I didn't really care about Lapidus or Miles or Richard getting to the plane and getting off the island, because I never really cared about Lapidus or Miles or Richard to begin with; it was another ancillary plot shoe-horned in -in my opinion- to pad out the season. Meh that's really all I have, a resounding meh and a lot of undeserved resentment for a show that has entertained me consistently and piqued my interest and imagination continuously since it's inception.
I really shouldn't complain, because "Lost" was such a great, great show over the course of it's time on the air that to sit here and nitpick over the finale would be unfair to the people who wrote it, produced it, acted in it and directed it; those people really deserve all the praise and adoration in the world for putting together such a fantastic show. My own, snarky opinions of the finale aside, "Lost" was special and not too long from now I'm going to look back and really, really miss it. I'll be out at a bar one night when someone will put The Mamma's and The Poppa's "Make Your Own Kind of Music" on and I'll need to scuttle home to pop in the DVD and start the journey all over again, because, after all, that's what it's about isn't it?
Since 2007 I have not been able to listen to Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" without becoming flooded by a tidal wave of conflicting emotions. I feel angry, happy, sad, nostalgically reminiscent, cynical, curious and disappointed. It all meshes together pretty well, and not too long after hearing the song I start to get the itch to hunker down and watch "The Sopranos" again for the second, third or millionth time. In my head I see Tony sitting in the booth at the diner waiting for his ungrateful -if not entirely righteous in their indignation- family make their way towards him amidst various shady characters that may or may not be about to shoot them all. Then, the abrupt cut to black, lack of audio, a brief moment of "what the hell just happened" and roll credits. Did I mention this happens every time? Well, it does, because "The Sopranos" was for me something akin to a religious experience. It wasn't that I loved watching mobsters shoot each other or anything like that; I didn't play the "who gets whacked this week" game with my friends. I loved the story, the characters, the moral ambiguity and the style it was all produced in. To this day, I have not seen a better television show before or since -yet "Mad Men" is starting to encroach on sacred ground, if you ask me- Tony and his glorified crew of New Jersey goombahs showed up on HBO 11 years ago. I miss "The Sopranos" almost every day. Where some people rant and rave about "The Wire" (and rightly so, from what I've heard and seen) there is just something about "The Sopranos" and the way it ended that has continued to make it an interesting show long past it's expiration date rolled on by.
For all the criticism the end of "The Sopranos" received from critics and fans alike, I've got a feeling the ending of "Lost" is going to be the one that might actually get people to throw hands in the street over differing opinions. It's just something about the fans of "Lost" that makes me think there is going to be a zeitgeist fueled backlash that may or may not cause meta-riots in the para-streets between all the different factions of fanboys and girls out there.
Where the ending of "The Sopranos" was challenging and required one to be of an open mind; the ending of "Lost" was like a watermelon, de-seeded and pre-sliced served up on a platter. They myriad enigmatic plot twists, story arcs and characters that the show had become known for and very rightly praised over were thrown away in favor of making the finale accessible and understandable even to the most casual fan. That, to me, is a vicious cop out that was completely and totally unnecessary for a show that had been such a game changer over the course of the past 6 years. Still, I can't say I hated it though, and in looking back over the history of the show I would be remiss if I didn't say there were some terribly klunky episodes that left me feeling like I'd wasted 45 minutes of my life looking at an emotionless, overly complicated mess (read: any "Kate-centric" episode... you all know they were terrible).
Sacrificing some quality for the sake of advancing the shows plot lines had been something I'd grown too complacent about over the years. I'd sigh at the end of a particularly ridiculous, out of context episode and remind myself that "Lost" is different and it's all leading towards something bigger -or more confusing- than anything else network TV has ever tried to accomplish, and for the most part that's exactly what the show did. It overreached and, at times, underachieved, but it was all ok because it was so freaking interesting and engrossing and the cheese actually tasted pretty good once you really got into the show. I didn't care how many times Kate got her own episode because I knew a Ben and Locke episode was around the corner to make up for it, and, hey, Kate was a pretty important part of the show (for a while), it's just that her character was less interesting to me than a tuft of grass on a lonely desert plain. I'm sure others out there would disagree with me vehemently, and that's their right and that's another aspect of "Lost" that made the show so unique and so groundbreaking.
The discussions, arguments and theories that swirled around "Lost" from the second the world first heard the smoke monster and saw the trees tremble in his wake during the pilot are like nothing television has ever seen before. Add in the allegory, allusion and metaphor that the show was jam packed with and there was so much interpretation left to the audience that it was almost impossible not to get sucked in and go beyond the weekly offerings. People, meaning rabid fans, would scour the internet and actually research the symbols and meanings and names of fictional things happening on a fictional show that took place on an island that, we now know, was some sort of mystical stop-gap that prevented evil from seeping out into the world and eventually destroying it. The writers played into this extremely well, leaving clues and hints and little Easter eggs tucked into scenes that the keen eyed fans would notice and obsess over. It was, honestly, the perfect show for the internet age and, shockingly, despite the instant gratification nature of the net generation, remained an utterly unsolvable mystery to the majority of the people who watched it week in and week out. Really, that's just amazing stuff when you put your thinking cap on and give it a good once over in your mind grapes.
I don't do recap write-ups, so I'll spare my sparse audience the tedium of a play-by-play in favor of touching upon some of the moving and more important moments of the finale that will have me thinking for the rest of my life.
First off, congratulations to Hurley for being named the island's protector, it was an entirely deserved moment and one that made me extremely happy despite the fact that I and the rest of the world did not get to see one single, solitary second of Hurley in charge other than him asking Ben to be his number 2. It was really astounding to see "the voice of the audience" get to take the reigns and become the new Jacob. As much as I said to myself over the course of the final season, "I wish it would be Hurley," I had little to no hope that it would really happen, but I was wrong and the world of "Lost" is a much better place for it. The actors (Jorge Garcia and Michael Emerson) were brilliant as usual, and the final scene when Hurley asks Ben to come inside the church before telling him he was a "good number 2" was really touching and, had it been between say, Sawyer and Sayid would have been much less ingratiating. This aspect of the finale I was super, super happy with (if you can't already tell).
Speaking of Sawyer...
... I have, since the first time James Ford said "sonofabitch" in an exasperated way, been an unabashed fan of the character and hugely impressed by the actor (Josh Holloway), and when he and Juliette finally re-met in the sideways-verse I lost control and started gulp-crying like a little gilr who just watched her pony get run over by an 18-wheeler. For a character that was so reserved and somewhat guarded throughout the entire run of the show, seeing him let go like that was more moving than I was prepared for. Even though, on the whole, I'm not the biggest fan of Juliette I wanted Sawyer to find happiness somewhere since the agony was as plain as the nose on his face when she died. It was nice to see him get what he wanted, even though he had to die to find it.
Right, by the way, the sideways-verse? Yeah, turns out that was some kind of holding pen for the characters until they made their way into the bright, shiny light or something. Ugh, I wanted to kick a small child when Christian Shepherd came in at the end and gave the heavy-handed, all to easy to stomach wrap up that explained what the hell was going on. It was just a stupid, gimmicky season long thing that was used to make the audience think something was happening when it really wasn't. To be blunt, it pissed me off in such a unique way that I'm still trying to come up with the correct phrasing; which I am, currently, failing at. I suppose for a show that has been so confusing a little levity and straightforwardness was needed, but I was hoping that wouldn't have been the case. I didn't need all the questions to be answered (and they weren't), but it would have been nice to see the ending be a little more ambiguous and, -sigh-, action packed instead of the bland, emotionless meeting in the church that bordered on shiny-town. I'll get over it, but it bugged me.
Honestly, everything else that happened in the finale was something... well, it was something. I can't put my finger on any other moments that had me jumping out of my seat or feeling really, truly compelled to care for what was happening onscreen, because it all felt sort of dead (no pun intended) about 45 minutes in. I have no clue why UnLocke was killed so early on when it seemed like the entire season was gearing up towards some sort of full out war between he and Jack's diminutive group of followers, but that didn't happen, it was an anti-climax punctuated by a pretty sweet jump-punch from Jack to UnLocke; which I mistook as the beginning of an awesome fight scene on a quivering, about to fall into the ocean cliff. I didn't really care about Lapidus or Miles or Richard getting to the plane and getting off the island, because I never really cared about Lapidus or Miles or Richard to begin with; it was another ancillary plot shoe-horned in -in my opinion- to pad out the season. Meh that's really all I have, a resounding meh and a lot of undeserved resentment for a show that has entertained me consistently and piqued my interest and imagination continuously since it's inception.
I really shouldn't complain, because "Lost" was such a great, great show over the course of it's time on the air that to sit here and nitpick over the finale would be unfair to the people who wrote it, produced it, acted in it and directed it; those people really deserve all the praise and adoration in the world for putting together such a fantastic show. My own, snarky opinions of the finale aside, "Lost" was special and not too long from now I'm going to look back and really, really miss it. I'll be out at a bar one night when someone will put The Mamma's and The Poppa's "Make Your Own Kind of Music" on and I'll need to scuttle home to pop in the DVD and start the journey all over again, because, after all, that's what it's about isn't it?
Monday, April 26, 2010
Some Days
Some days something I read or hear that disturbs so much it makes me face reality. I hate facing reality. Reality is one of those things that I try my hardest to ignore at all costs, because the harsh truth of it all is that the world (and the people who live on it) might not be worth saving.
My case in point: People Walk By Hero Bleeding to Death.
You can watch the video if you want, but I warn you it's as hard to stomach as grainy, black and white security camera footage can be. You can even read the article and there you'll learn about a poor 31-year-old, Guatemalan immigrant named Alfredo Tale-Yax who bravely stepped in while a woman was being assaulted and suffered stab wounds to the chest. He would die, slowly and probably in terrible pain, on the sidewalk as numerous people walked by - one even finding it in himself to snap a cell phone camera picture of the fallen hero - without intervening, without calling for help, without so much as a second look. Though, it does look, once it became far too late for anything to be done, that someone took it upon themselves to call for help. Still, a man who unselfishly stepped in to help a complete stranger - what I consider to be a heroic act - was killed.
Today, I consider the entirety of New York City and society at large to be accomplices in this man's death. Not even the woman whose life he may very well have saved decided to double back and call for help on the cell phone you know she had in her pocket, purse or jacket. I'm sure, somewhere deep down in her fearful mind she knew what to do (make the call, save the man's life who just saved hers) but the instinct to run away from harm is so powerful, I'm sure immediate gratitude for her savior was far from her thoughts. I'm sure she would do everything in her power to save the man now, looking back at it and seeing the outcome, but she can't, and his death - his blood - is on her hands as well. As harsh as it may seem to admit, she is no better than the person who attacked her and later killed the man who would protect her and possibly save her life.
I feel shame on a level I did not think possible. I feel disgusted and depressed and sad to see that the state of humanity has withered away to something I do not recognize any more. Hell, I'm not even a good guy. I'm just a nerd with a keyboard who likes to drink more than he should, loves his girlfriend and his dog and tries to keep himself out of trouble. I'm not a hero, and I'm not even a very good writer, but things like this, on a visceral level, make me angry. Very, very angry.
The world and it's people are too beautiful to be treated this way.
My case in point: People Walk By Hero Bleeding to Death.
You can watch the video if you want, but I warn you it's as hard to stomach as grainy, black and white security camera footage can be. You can even read the article and there you'll learn about a poor 31-year-old, Guatemalan immigrant named Alfredo Tale-Yax who bravely stepped in while a woman was being assaulted and suffered stab wounds to the chest. He would die, slowly and probably in terrible pain, on the sidewalk as numerous people walked by - one even finding it in himself to snap a cell phone camera picture of the fallen hero - without intervening, without calling for help, without so much as a second look. Though, it does look, once it became far too late for anything to be done, that someone took it upon themselves to call for help. Still, a man who unselfishly stepped in to help a complete stranger - what I consider to be a heroic act - was killed.
Today, I consider the entirety of New York City and society at large to be accomplices in this man's death. Not even the woman whose life he may very well have saved decided to double back and call for help on the cell phone you know she had in her pocket, purse or jacket. I'm sure, somewhere deep down in her fearful mind she knew what to do (make the call, save the man's life who just saved hers) but the instinct to run away from harm is so powerful, I'm sure immediate gratitude for her savior was far from her thoughts. I'm sure she would do everything in her power to save the man now, looking back at it and seeing the outcome, but she can't, and his death - his blood - is on her hands as well. As harsh as it may seem to admit, she is no better than the person who attacked her and later killed the man who would protect her and possibly save her life.
I feel shame on a level I did not think possible. I feel disgusted and depressed and sad to see that the state of humanity has withered away to something I do not recognize any more. Hell, I'm not even a good guy. I'm just a nerd with a keyboard who likes to drink more than he should, loves his girlfriend and his dog and tries to keep himself out of trouble. I'm not a hero, and I'm not even a very good writer, but things like this, on a visceral level, make me angry. Very, very angry.
The world and it's people are too beautiful to be treated this way.
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