I sort of cringe these days when someone will ask me if I'm a wrestling fan. That wasn't always the case. I used to say yes with a certain pride in my voice--being the fan of a "fringe sport" made you feel a certain sense of inclusion, as if you were privy to something that the masses in general were not. But that was back in the days of wrestling the way it USED to be....the way it was when my maternal grandparents turned me into a fan during my summer visits to South Carolina.
It was a long time ago.
Years later, somewhere along the line, I got "smarted up" to the wrestling business.
Oh sure, everyone always told me that it was "fake".....which I always thought was an interesting way of describing the fact that the endings were pre-determined. Because once I got closer to the industry...more "inside" as a fan, I found out things that I your average person could never understand. Like for instance:
1) Not all the punches are pulled. Sometimes a wrestler will just stand there, knowing that he's going to get hit, take a punch--because it adds to the "authenticity" of the match.
2) Yeah, they learn how to fall. Its probably a good idea when you are doing it 10 times a match and you work 300 times-plus a year.
3) The blood? Its real. Its not "chicken blood" or some other ridiculous thing like that.
It usually is obtained one of two ways---"the hard way" which means you ALLOW your opponent (almost always a veteran of the sport who has some prior experience at this sort of thing) to punch you on an area of your face, maybe around your eyebrow....until the blood starts to flow---or, and this is the one that really creeps out non-wrestling fans, you "gig"....or "blade". The wrestler will take that shot from the dreaded "foreign object" and then take the tip of the razor blade that he has hidden in the tape wrapped around his fingers....and scrape his forehead until the blood comes out. No.....really. That's how they do it. I know it sounds totally barbaric. But the old wrestling adage used to be: "Red makes green". Blood means money.
And that's just a few of the things I learned. Trust me, there are more. As I continued to be smartened up, my old friend Pete Lederberg told me that "the closer you get to wrestling's true inside....the more repelled you become." Another wrestling insider countered by saying that, on the contrary, the more a fan learns about wrestling, the more they are drawn to the true darkness, the deception, the seediness of it. The proverbial moth to the flame.
Which brings me to Chris Benoit, his wife Nancy, and their son Daniel.
I'm sure you read about the Benoit family, the murder-suicide and the unquestioned senselessness of it all. I've been a wrestling fan since around 1971 and I've never felt the sickness in my stomach that I felt on Monday evening when the story first broke.
I sat by my computer watching the updates coming fast and furious, and here I was, hoping that the story of their deaths either wasn't true....or, if it was....some sort of tragic accident. A gas leak. Maybe even a home invasion. How often do you hope that someone's death was a random robbery? I did all of this because of the looming sense of dread that I felt that somehow this would end up being just what it turned out to be, a murder-suicide. And then I knew that all of those old questions would be thrust upon me: Hey, weren't you a wrestling fan? What's up with the guy who killed his wife?
Hey, why did that wrestler murder his own son??
And then of course, the media frenzy started, with those geniuses at ESPN immediately trying to pinpoint steriods as a likely contributing factor. ROID RAGE.....the talking heads tried to lay the blame for the incident on STEROIDS!! STEROIDS!! Why?
Well, because it makes for really nice headlines and then they get to act like their all really concerned about wrestlers and athletes. Excuse me while I puke.
The next to nothing that I know about steroids does include this: A roid rage does not last over the course of 3 days. There's the momentary craziness....then it passes.
I just cannot fathom a man in the midst of a roid rage placing bibles by his dead wife's body and then going to watch a PPV with the son that he is planning on killing.
Let me give you some insight into the life of a wrestler that you may not realize. A wrestler who is employed by the WWE is usually on the road 20 to 25 days a month.
And that's probably being generous. Multiple that over the course of a year and you are talking about a person being on the road over the course of a year anywhere from 250 to 300 days a year. Its not the glamorous life that some might think. You generally are required to be at the arena hours before the card is scheduled to begin and its a long, boring day. You come out when its finally time for your match and you get the incredible rush of adrenaline that anyone would get as they soak in the adoration of the crowd.
You compete in the physically exhausting match, walk out, once again to the adoration of the crowd--and the undeniable rush that it brings--and return to the dressing room.
If you work near the top of the card, chances are the dressing room is nearly empty and you dress and leave alone. You make your way back to your hotel where you are faced with a couple of choices. That rush you felt from the crowd, that one that got you so high, has not completely subsided.....so you have to decide to either go downstairs to the hotel bar--where there will undoubtedly be some of "the boys" drinking themselves into a stupor that goes with coming down from the rush and probably a mixture of fans and "arena rats"....those particularly pathetic women who feel some sense of importance in having sex--of all types and peculiarities--with a wrestler. That of course could lead to all sorts of things like venereal disease and pregnancies....but for now, let's skip over those and get back to the other choice a wrestler has back in that hotel room. The other choice the wrestler has is to sit in the hotel room and try to "come down" from that rush.
Sometimes it might be by drinking some beer....sometimes a bottle of wine (there's one very famous wrestler--married and with kids--who came down by going back to his hotel room and....get this....READING. Trust me.....that guywas like a freak of nature) and sometimes with a little pharmaceutical help. The wrestler might take a sleeping pill, or maybe a muscle relaxant...or maybe both....sometimes with some wine. Sometimes they begin to take a pill called a "soma", which is a muscle relaxant. And eventually the rush subsides and they are able to sleep. Until the next day.
The next day begins and the wrestler has to get himself up and usually off to the airport to catch a flight to the next city. If he is really, really lucky the next city is within driving distance--ya know, maybe 500 miles or less--and if he is even luckier, he can hitch a ride with one of the other "boys" to the next city. But if he's not lucky, its off to the airport and onto another town for another show. He gets to the arena, and he's still feeling a little out of it from that soma he took the night before. So to perk himself up a little bit, he takes the opposite....maybe (if you're naive) its something as innocent as a caffeine tablet. Maybe its something sold over the counter to truckers, to give them that boost for those long drives at night. Or maybe its NOT something sold over the counter. Maybe its something that is not available at your local 7-11. Maybe its something that is not even available at your local pharmacy. But hey, it works and it does the trick, because a few minutes after the wrestler takes it....he's sharp as a tack and ready to go out and perform for the crowd. The one that won't get there for another couple of hours. And this cycle keeps going on, day after day after day. And eventually, that one soma and that one glass of wine turn into two....and then three.
And that little pick-me-up that you needed in the morning turns into a bigger pick-me-up. And all of a sudden you have a Louie Spiccoli on your hands. He was a wrestler of some note who died--at aged 27--in his sleep from an overdose of soma.
That's part of the glamorous life of a wrestler on the road. Oh, and then there's the rare time you spend actually AT home. Those couple of days out of a month when you come back and are expected to re-enter the "real world". Your wife is the same woman you left at home, and probably doesn't realize some of the weird things that have been happening on the road.....the drugs, the drinking, the women, the sex....and probably doesn't understand why she is being treated differently. Your children probably only know you as the person they see on the television--and that's only if you're high enough on the card to GET on television. It can make those visits home REALLY, REALLY complicated.
Which brings us back again, to Chris Benoit and the life and home that he and Nancy Benoit had tried to create for themselves and their young son, Daniel. Life, in a cruel twist of fate, had given Chris and Nancy a special needs child and there had been some rather vocal disagreements as to the manner and method of treatment and care for Daniel. Its not an easy situation in a perfect relationship....and this, quite obviously, was not a perfect relationship. The situation was exacerbated by the schedule that Chris kept on the road. And so, the conflict began to set its course for the terrible events that took place over the weekend that began on June 22, 2007.
Chris Benoit was like a lot of kids in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He loved to watch wrestling. When he was growing up, his idol was the Dynamite Kid. The man known as DK was one of pro wrestling first and greatest high fliers, a man given to performing what would later be referred to as "high risk manuevers", which thrilled and amazed the audience in the arenas and at home....but which took an incredible toll on the body and mind of the Kid, who's real name was Tom Billington. Young Chris began training at the legendary home of Stu Hart in Calgary as a teenager and his training would eventually take him to the dojo of New Japan wrestling. I know this because, in December of 1987 I went to Japan with two friends of mine---so hooked on pro wrestling at the time that I actually went to go and watch PRO WRESTLING---and met a young Chris Benoit. He was a pleasant young guy, friendly enough, but even then it was apparent that Chris Benoit's goal in life--his single minded purpose if you will--was to become the greatest wrestler in the world.
Along the way during that pursuit, he began working for World Championship Wrestling, which was based out of Atlanta, Georgia. During the mid-90's, Benoit was regarded as one of the really good performers "in the ring", but perhaps lacking in that certain quality that makes one person a "star" and another a mid-card performer. One of the matchmakers at this point in time, or "bookers" (the person who creates the storylines that are played out in pro wrestling) was a man named Kevin Sullivan. Sullivan was a longtime performer who was, politely put, passed his prime. But Sullivan was still, as he always had been, a hell of a talker. He could get on a microphone and sell a feud to the audience. Sullivan decided that Benoit would be a perfect foil. Sullivan would do the talking, and the younger Benoit would use his ability in the ring to take the bumps and falls and sell the matches. It sounded perfect. And then Sullivan had another idea.
He decided to further the storyline to have his real life wife Nancy Sullivan leave him (within the storyline) and run off with Benoit. It made an interesting storyline even more interesting. I mean, REALLY interesting. Sullivan even had Nancy travel with Chris in order to "sell" the storyline to the average wrestling fan. So naturally, what ends up happening? Chris and Nancy fall in love during this timeframe.....for real....and Nancy leaves Sullivan....for real....for Benoit. People inside wrestling liked to say that Kevin Sullivan booked his own divorce. Living proof of the old adage: "only in wrestling".
Move forward almost 10 years to Wrestlemania XX. The most improbably and unlikely of things occurs. Chris Benoit follows the trail blazed only a couple of months before by his real life best friend Eddie Guerraro and wins the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) World Heavyweight Championship. There is an emotional celebration in the ring as an openly weeping Benoit, having finally achieved the goal he set as a youngster all those years before in Edmonton, is presented with his championship belt and is joined in the ring by his wife and young child who jump into his arms and hug him with the rarest of things in the crazy world of pro wrestling---genuine emotion.
I remember the event distinctly...because I happen to be watching it at a friends house.
We had heard it through the pro wrestling grapevine that Benoit was going to get the strap, but none of the crowd of wrestling buddies gathered that night really believed that owner//promoter Vince McMahon would actually give the title of world champion to...ya know...the guy who really was the best wrester in the world. I know, I know...it sounds ridiculous. But that's the crazy world of pro wrestling. Anyway, at the moment when the bell rang and we all realized that Benoit had in fact won the world's title, my friends and I--all of us jaded longtime wrestling fans---popped out of our seats like a bunch of wrestling fans who weren't wise to the ways of the industry. Marks, they call them. We were high fiving each other, in a state of disbelief that Benoit had finally achieved his life long dream. It was one of the last really special moments I had as a wrestling fan. Or ever will.
That's because, according to the police reports...sometime on June 22, last week.....Chris Benoit....that great guy that all of us were rooting for that night three years ago....murdered his wife Nancy. He then bound her hands and feet and placed bibles around her limp body. Sometimes later the next day, he choked his young son to death.
Some people have speculated that perhaps the murder of his wife was an act of rage...of violence gone out of control...and that, upon coming to his senses he realized what he had done and what he would be facing....and what his special needs son would be facing without his mother and father there to guide him. Maybe in his own warped way of thinking, Chris Benoit felt that he was killing his own son out of love. I don't know and neither does anyone else--its just the subject of speculation. But after he did that, Chris texted messaged some friends....messages that were seen as being odd enough that officials of the WWE--and trust me, these aren't the kind of people who get concerned about something real easy--were concerned enough to send the police to the Benoit home. They discovered the bodies of Nancy and Daniel in their respective rooms....and then they went into the exercise room and found Chris, who had hung himself by a pulley on a piece of weightlifting apparatus.
There was no note. There was nothing to explain why Chris Benoit....that nice young kid I had met in the winter of 1987 in Japan....the kid who had finally got to the top of the mountain in his profession....had somehow lost his mind and killed his family before ending his own life. No clues. Nothing that screamed out to investigating officers.
And so a lifetime of struggling against the odds...of being "too small" to be a headliner, of not being a good enough interview....of being "too good not to push but being someone who won't make us a lot of money".....of all that good feeling that came out of me and my friends on that night in 2004 as we jumped up and cheered that Chris Benoit had finally gotten his moment in the sun....all of that was wiped out by a weekend of madness. And so Nancy Benoit and Daniel Benoit are gone....murdered by the one man that both of them loved more than anyone....who they trusted more than anyone.
And that night in 2004 now just seems like a night that those friends of mine and I probably could've just spent watching old wrestling tapes.....and remembering how it used to be....when I was a kid during the summers in South Carolina....listening to my grandmother cursing at the bad guys on television. It was a long, long time ago.
Later,
Jeff
Saturday, June 30, 2007
6/30/07--The Life and Death of Chris Benoit
6/30/07--I have lots of updating to do
Get ready to be shocked, amazed, appalled....and fascinated. Hey, this is where I work:
So Judge Larry Seidlin, of Anna Nicole Smith fame, has quit the Broward County Courthouse to go off to Hollywood to develop a TV show.
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LOU Toman/afp/getty images
Judge Larry: Soon on a small screen near you.
South Florida should rejoice.
It´s not so much that the 57-year-old Seidlin was a bad judge; it was that he wasn´t much of a judge at all. He is, in fact, a shining example of the dim era ruled by outgoing Chief Judge Dale Ross, who pretty much let judges do as they pleased so long as they bowed at his feet.
So, other than drag the country though a needless and absurd Anna Nicole hearing/screen test, what did Seidlin do?
Well, as almost everyone at the courthouse can tell you, flying through dockets in the morning and playing tennis in the afternoon was his M.O. But what few know is that he also allegedly had time to wrangle gifts out of at least one lawyer working in his division and a small fortune from an elderly woman living in his ocean-view condo building on Las Olas Boulevard.
We´ll start with the woman.
Picture if you will the now-nationally recognizable bald and well-tanned Seidlin carrying a plate of breakfast down the elevator of the Marine Tower to the third floor and knocking on a door with his offering. Then imagine an 81-year-old woman opening the door with a smile and gratefully accepting the meal.
Now add lunch and dinner and throw in trips to the doctor and the hair salon and you might start to understand what Seidlin has been doing for years for Barbara Kasler, a wealthy neighbor with no living family but an older sister.
¨All of her sons passed away,¨ explains Seidlin´s mother-in-law, Barbara Ray. ¨So we took over and help her and do things with her. She takes all kinds of trips with Larry in Fort Lauderdale. She´s like a mother to him, she adores him, that´s like her little boy.
¨He even takes her to the hairdresser. He is adorable. That´s what people don´t know about him.¨
But Seidlin´s good deeds haven´t gone unrewarded. The judge and his family have garnered a small fortune from Kasler, who is in poor health and says she suffers memory lapses.
Kasler sold Seidlin´s in-laws a 17th-floor condo in the building for what was, based on comparable sales in the building, a bargain price of $300,000 (a similar unit sold later that year for $440,000). Then she deeded over a vacant lot in Palm Bay, in coastal Central Florida, to Seidlin´s wife, Belinda, for $100. It´s assessed at $45,000 today but is probably worth more. The elderly woman is also paying for Seidlin´s daughter´s education at the exclusive Pine Crest School. Six-year-old Dax has already spent two years at the school at an estimated cost of about $35,000.
On top of that, the judge has been enjoying privileges as Kasler´s guest at the Lauderdale Yacht Club.
I wanted to ask Seidlin about the windfall from the widow, but he had his lawyer, prominent defense attorney David Bogenschutz, contact me.
¨This is an elderly woman who is apparently lonely and has no family and has been reverse-adopted by the Seidlin family,¨ Bogenschutz told me. ¨That may be a lot of money, but I look at this as: What business is it of anybody else´s if it has nothing to do with his public persona?¨
Well, Seidlin happened to run the probate and family divisions at the courthouse before his resignation, so he should know better than to chisel money out of an old woman.
But is he really exploiting Kasler, or is he just being rewarded for good deeds?
That would depend on the content of his character, and, believe me, Seidlin is one hell of a character. I´ve spoken with numerous lawyers at the courthouse, and the picture that emerges of Seidlin is of a man who doesn´t like to work, has spent almost as much time on the tennis court as in a courtroom during his 29 years as a judge, doesn´t like to pay for anything, and usually finds an angle to benefit himself. In other words, he´s a guy who might just find a way to get some serious dough out of an elderly woman.
Some of the stories I´ve heard are humorous, some serious. The one about the Louis Vuitton purse is a bit of both.
It begins with veteran attorney Lawrence ¨Chris¨ Roberts walking through courthouse corridors about four years ago. Seidlin at the time was regularly appointing Roberts as a special public defender in the juvenile court, which paid the lawyer $350 a case.
It was actually lucrative work, especially in the courtroom of ¨Lightning Larry,¨ who was known to speed through cases in the morning so he wouldn´t have to work in the afternoon.
When Roberts saw Seidlin on this day, the judge slapped him on the hand, transferring a small piece of paper. Roberts looked in his hand, he says, and found a tag for a Louis Vuitton purse at Neiman Marcus that cost in excess of $1,000.
The judge then said that his wife would love to have the purse for her birthday. ¨The implication was that if I didn´t do this,¨ Roberts said, ¨the appointments would dry up.¨
The lawyer had his then-secretary, Nikki Jarema, go to the Galleria Mall in Fort Lauderdale to pick up the purse.
Published: June 28, 2007
I contacted Jarema, who is now a real-estate agent, and she told me she remembered buying the purse, which she said was for Seidlin´s wife for her birthday. Later, Roberts met Seidlin in a parking lot at the intersection of Federal Highway and State Road 84 to deliver the purse, which Seidlin took with him directly to the airport. The judge and his wife were traveling out of town for her birthday, and Seidlin presented the purse to her on the flight as a gift, Roberts says.
Roberts says it wasn´t the only time Seidlin had instructed him to buy him gifts. There was another expensive purse purchase, and the judge also instructed him to buy a specific polo shirt for him, he says.
Well, it doesn´t take a lawyer to know that if Roberts´ stories are true, some of this might be just a little bit illegal -- and not only because the judge didn´t report the gifts on his financial disclosure forms.
Trying to reach Seidlin, I spoke with his wife, Belinda, and told her the story. ¨There is no way Larry would do anything like that,¨ she said. ¨He is so careful, and he´s not stupid. He would never do anything that´s not appropriate or not right.¨
Bogenschutz, however, told me that Seidlin had admitted that he received the purse -- but said he later returned it to Roberts.
Roberts laughed when I told him that.
¨He came into my office later,¨ Roberts said, ¨with an old beat-up Publix bag that had some old leather junky purse in it. He said, You bought my wife a purse; now I bought your wife a purse.´ It literally stank. I threw it in the trash can.¨
Bogenschutz told me he would get back to Seidlin on the matter and didn´t comment further. But the issue isn´t an easy one for him.
¨They both are friends of mine,¨ Bogenschutz told me. ¨I don´t know where the truth is. I think it´s somewhere in the middle.¨
But the gifts pale in comparison to what he´s gotten from Broward taxpayers. Seidlin went through his morning dockets in a flash, courthouse sources say. Broward County Chief Public Defender Howard Finkelstein says the judge was known to run a ¨rocket docket¨ and was so easy on defendants that lawyers relished working in his courtroom.
In May, WSVN-TV (Channel 7) investigative reporter Carmel Cafeiro followed him for four days and found that he took three-hour lunch breaks and rarely worked more than an hour in the afternoon before heading off to the tennis courts. For this, he was making $145,000 a year off taxpayers -- and will make that much for the rest of his life from his pension.
Seidlin´s family members have also made out at the public trough. His wife, Belinda, worked as an investigator for Al Schreiber, the former chief public defender, who was the best man at the couple´s 1999 Las Vegas wedding.
When Finkelstein replaced Schreiber, his chief investigator, Al Smith, looked into Belinda´s work.
¨There was three or four months´ of work on her desk that she had never even touched,¨ Smith recalls. ¨And there were a lot of complaints about the work she was assigned, because it was incomplete.¨
Finkelstein quickly fired Belinda, who now works as a real-estate agent.
Seidlin´s father-in-law, Oren Ray, also works at the courthouse. Several years ago he got a job as a courtroom deputy for the Broward Sheriff´s Office. Seidlin´s sister-in-law, attorney Wendy Seidlin, made the Miami Herald in 2000 for being among the top recipients of special public defender appointments at the courthouse.
And half the tight-knit clan seems to be involved with Barbara Kasler, the elderly woman who has lavished the family with the financial windfall. Kasler, though, says she doesn´t believe she´s being exploited in the least.
¨I´m waiting for him to bring me my lunch right now,¨ she said of the judge. ¨And I´m hungry. I´m taking advantage of him.¨
I asked Kasler, who is originally from Indian-apolis and acknowledges that she has a net worth in the millions of dollars, about the transfer of the Palm Bay land to Belinda Ray Seidlin.
¨I didn´t want to bother with it anymore, so I gave it to Dax,¨ says Kasler, referring to Seidlin´s daughter. ¨I thought she might want to build a house on it someday.¨
When I told her it was assessed for $45,000, she was incredulous, saying she didn´t think it was worth nearly that much. She acknowledged that she has given Seidlin cash gifts but wouldn´t say how much she´s given him. ¨I don´t remember,¨ she said.
When asked about her paying for Dax´s education at Pine Crest, she replied, ¨That´s between me and Dax.¨
Belinda Seidlin´s response to the same question mirrored Kasler´s: ¨That´s between her and Dax,¨ the mother said.
Bogenschutz, the attorney, said that this is a case of a kind family -- and a kind man named Larry Seidlin -- being rewarded.
¨If you ask him for something, he would drive to the next county to get it for you,¨ Bogenschutz says of Seidlin. ¨That´s the way he is.¨
Probably true -- as long as there´s something in it for Judge Larry.
Oh my!!!
Later,
Jeff
Sunday, June 24, 2007
6/24/07--Greatest action films ever????
Snappy comments courtesy of yours truly.
25) The Incredibles: What...no Jonny Quest??
Why is a cartoon on this list???
24) Lethal Weapon: Seems awful low for this list.
23) Drunken Master II: The Jackie Chan entry.
Personally, I liked his movie where he jumped from a rope ladder hanging from a helicopter down to a moving train. NO stunt man. Wow!
22) Predator: Much like LW, seems too low for the list.
21) SpiderMan 2--loved the movie...great fight scene with Spidey & Doc Ock...don't know if it belongs on the list though.
20) Kill Bill Vol I: Some great action sequences.
How about the fight scenes inside the House of the Blue Leaves? Yowsa.
19) Goldfinger: I guess this is the James Bond entry. Personally I would've gone for From Russia With Love--great fight scene on a train between Connery & Robert Shaw. Come to think of it, the new Bond movie had a terrific opening sequence involving a chase on a construction site.
18) The Adventures of Robin Hood: this is the original--the Errol Flynn version, which is still the best of the Robin Hood films, IMO. Not sure it belongs on this list though.
17) The Bourne Supremacy: Out does Bond at...being Bond.
16) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Loved the movie...don't really think of it as an "action movie" though.
15) Enter the Dragon: Bruce Lee entry.
14) RoboCop: Terrifically underrated film, great action sequences and some hilarious satire in the commercial parodies.
13) The Wild Bunch: Legendary western with one of the alltime great shootouts, but I can't help thinking that there are some terrific John Wayne & Clint Eastwood movies that didn't make the cut.
12) The Empire Strikes Back: Pretty much regarded as the best of the Star Wars movies...don't know if it belongs here though.
11) Speed: Keanu Reeves...remember him? Best part of any action hero is having a credible and fun bad guy (sorta like wrestling)...Dennis Hopper was great here.
10) Terminator 2-Judgement Day: Arnold at his zenith here. Broke all sorts of new ground with the CGI--"liquid metal"
9) Hard Boiled: I'm so glad they included this movie on the list. With apologies to The Wild Bunch, the greatest movie shootout of alltime is featured here, as action superhero Chow Yun Fat shoots it out with the bad guys...in a hospital.
Including...the maternity ward. With a newborn in one hand. Folks,it don't get much better than that.
8) Saving Private Ryan: great war movie included most likely because of the unforgettable opening 30 minutes.
7) Gladiator: Okay, the stuff with the tigers is a little hokey, but there are some terrific fight sequences here...Maximus--father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife...were you not entertained???
6) Seven Samurai: One of the alltime greats..but does it still pack its original punch?
5) The Matrix: Basically redefined the genre.
4) The Road Warrior: Well, since its one of my top 2 films of alltime...you know I'm not going to be disappointed. The article includes the awesome opening narration:
"The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice. And in this maelstrom of dacay, ordinary men were battered and smashed.
Men like Max...In the roar of an engine, he lost everything. And became a shell of a man...a man who wandered out into the wasteland. And it was here, in this blighted place, that he learned...to live again."
Man...that's some good stuff.
3) Raiders of the Lost Ark: Pretty much goes without saying, ya know?
2) Aliens: Sigourney...kickin a little alien ass.
and number 1?
1) Die Hard: Great movie...great lead character and performance by Willis, but what made the movie truly GREAT was Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber.
Just my opinion though.
Here's a couple of movies that I sorta figured would've made the list:
Braveheart
Dirty Harry
Jaws
Anyway....thoughts?
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
6/19/07--Big changes in my little girl's life
"You SAID you weren't going to tell him."
Mom, ever the cool cucumber looks right back at her and says:
"I didn't. You just did--he didn't know."
Oops. Kellie had a slightly embarassed look on her face. Yep, the old cat was officially out of the bag.
My daughter....14 yrs old....gonna be 15 in August....officially has a boyfriend.
Something tells me....the fun has really just begun.
Later,
Jeff
Monday, June 18, 2007
Very nice weekend
Well, it was an eventful weekend. It was a triple shot weekend. We traveled up to Orlando to visit my parents, since this past Friday was my Mom's birthday.....and Sunday was Father's Day....and Saturday was the last day of band camp for the lovely Kellie Poe-Bowdren--complete with concert. So we made the trek up there on Friday
afternoon and got there in time to give my Mom a nice cake to celebrate her--what, you didn't think I was going to give you a number, did you????--birthday.
The following day we ventured to Deland, home of Stetson University (the Fighting Hatters), Florida to pick up Kellie and watch the concert that closed out her camp.
We were lucky enough to have my parents join us for the afternoon, which was pretty cool on a lot of different levels. It was really kind of cool to have my parents watch as my daughter was there performing--very prideful stuff. And so the concert is in this chapel on campus, which was built....I dunno....like 125 years ago. Absolutely gorgeous, oak floors, beautiful woodworking throughout.....which also meant that the acoustics were fairly amazing. So anyone who got up to go to the bathroom and who wasn't wearing sneakers had the entire audience listening to the CLOP, CLOP of their shoes. Needless to say, that also meant that anything above a whisper could also be heard. You know.....like a pair of grandparents who wanted to have a whispered conversation about how wonderful the concert was. Oh, they thought they were whispering....but instead the rest of the crow heard:
"ISN'T IT AMAZING HOW MUCH BEAUTIFUL MUSIC CAN COME OUT OF ONE INSTRUMENT?"
"WHAT?"
"I SAID...ISN'T IT INTERESTING HOW MUCH...."
Seriously..it was hilarious. After the concert we went back to the dorm room that Kellie had stayed in during the week and were regaled with stories about her "slightly" Goth roommate--the one who decided, first night of bandcamp--that she was depressed and wanted to begin cutting herself. Yowsa....ya gotta love teenagers these days. Naturally Kellie had managed to make approximately 73 friends in the 4 days she was at camp (its a gift) and had to offer some tearful farewells.....but finally we left the college.
We then made our way back to my parents house, and then followed that up with a nice dinner at the proverbial Outback's.
The weekend finished up on Sunday morning as we all got up and were able to share Father's Day with my Dad--even if I did tease him and tell him I had bought the Hilary Clinton bio for him. I could never be THAT cruel.
It was nice to be able to spend the morning of Father's Day with the man who has so influenced everything that I do in the role of a father and parent. I can't even tell you how many times I find myself saying:
"I'm turning into my father."
And that's a pretty good thing.
Later,
Jeff
Friday, June 15, 2007
6/15/07---HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!!!!!!!!!!
Love ya Ma!
Your baby boy.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
6/14/07---Youth is wasted on the young
Its up at venerable Stetson University just outside of Orlando, and I took her to the airport for a flight up there. This was her first official solo flight--just taking her to the terminal and seeing her off.
I was watching the plane taxi up to the gate, and I turned and looked at Kellie, who was waiting eagerly to get onboard to start her little adventure...and I couldn't help but think that things are changing very rapidly in my kids lives. Its as if: there's no turning back.
From this point on, the ball keeps rolling down the hill....and I can't stop it, even if I wanted too. Their growing up so fast.
Andy was due to get his senior yearbook photos taken yesterday, and so the night before we had his version of a life altering event. His Mom wanted him to look his absolute best for the photo op...and so....the electric razor was put away....and in its place came....the manual razor. Oh yeah. Shaving cream, hot water.....the whole nine yards. I kept waiting for him to hit an artery. He managed (somehow) to avoid them.
But he was doing it without fear of knicking himself---because he's never doen that yet.
But oh....give him time....give him time. One day he'll come out from the bathroom with a face covered with toilet paper. And then....he'll be making progress!
Later,
Jeff
Sunday, June 10, 2007
6/10/07--Random thoughts---because I really care
Paris Hilton is in jail!!!!! Isn't it horrible? Yeesh, have you ever seen so much paper wasted on such a non-story? I mean, the little trollop gets caught on a V.O.P. and is thrown into the clink for 30 days or so. Who cares? Why is this a story?
If her name was LaKeesha from Compton, you can bet your sweet ass that she would be doing the time and no one from Access Hollywood would be there. So why should Paris be treated any differently?
Answer?
She shouldn't be. Thank you for asking...now, I'll move on.
Tonight, the family is sitting around watching "Young Frankenstein". Its always good when you can educate the young people....know what I mean Vern?
Some recent news in the children's department. Andrew Poe-Bowdren recently got back the results of his ACT testing. Now, his mother and I both got a 23 when we took the test--a few years back. The maximum score on the test is a 36, and incoming students at Florida Institute of Technology average between a 24 and a 28. Andy's score?
31 baby. Yowsa. My little boy just got himself a ticket to college.
He scored in the 99th percentile in math. Dad's little scientist (Mom's also, but who's giving her any credit?)
Andy also aced his final exams, with his lowest grade on an exam being a B+.....the rest of the exams were all A's. That's the sort of academic progress I like to see.
His sister? Well........not quite as good. Oh sure, there was the ususual A in band.
What wasn't so good was the F on her final exam in her pre-law class--which resulted in her finishing with a D for her final semester grade. Mom & I were not happy with that.
However, I took a different approach this time. No yelling...no historonics. I told her that she was lucky that pre-law wasn't offered over the summer, because if it was, she would be in summer school. So she has to live with the D on her transcript. Luckily for her, it'll be from her freshman year and hopefully she learns from this and gets her act together by the start of next year. Oh, and there was the gardening. Did I mention that she hates to do anything having to do with gardening? You know, pulling weeds, that sort of thing. Which is why she was in such a happy moodthis morning as she sat in the dirt and grass and pulled the weeds from around our front door area. She really, really hates to sweat.
I think she got the message though.
Hey! Bigtime congratulations to my co-worker and potential future ex-Mrs. Bowdren, Ceci Barcelo Nunez and her husband Jorge---who became parents for the very first time on Friday morning. Their son Ryan--all 8lbs 12 ounces of him--joined the family.
The bad news was that I had predicted that he would be born the day BEFORE that, and so I missed winning the office pool by TEN HOURS!!!! All that money---down the drain!!! (Cough, cough) Um, I mean....all that money I had intended for the young mother and her baby....gone!!
Drats....foiled...again.
Later,
Jeff
Saturday, June 2, 2007
6/2/07--Sort of a significant event in our family
Jim Morrison said it best:
"Strange Days"
So the little bastard---whoops---I mean, ahem...the young gentleman comes over and we're introduced. As ususal, I was the picture of politeness and decorum.
"You the driver?"
"Uh....yes."
"You planning on any crazy teenage stuff while my daughter's in your car?"
"Uh...nope."
"Good...because I'm giving you my daughter in one piece....she better come back the same way."
"Uh...yes sir."
I love those short and sweet conversations.
So she went out in someone else's car....and her mom and I went out to dinner...and she made it home okay.
Didn't think about her once.
More like....202 times. But that might be a low figure.
Later,
Jeff