Expressively (Irresponsibly) Yours

I don’t care if I have Ebola, I’m riding my damn bike. - "Kaci Hickox"

When I was back there in seminary school ... there was a guy who used to get bogged down in expressing himself.  Huge sports fan, he was also (like me) a theater geek - and (also like me) used to write and direct things, and strut around like Fellini.

But when it came to expressing himself in public, when not dismissively, almost disdainfully, breaking off sentences to snort in bemusement ... M.D. would flounder for words, often babbling, repeating himself.

To be clear (and fair to the guy), I also have trouble getting sentences spoken in public to make sense ... Sometimes, getting them out of my mouth is a challenge!  Being a writer, I tend to overthink speech:  when speaking, I sometimes wrestle with adjectives ... synonyms, adverbs, metaphors, "flow" ... the same way I do as I when I'm writing.

The difference is that writing, no one's listening to me.  The exercise is done in private, the sweat and the grunting remain offstage.  The only thing a reader "hears" of my written words and stories is the result, not the process.

When speaking, I can sound retarded.  Confused, marble-mouthed (... and I mean no offense whatsoever to people with marbles in their mouths!) ...

Anyway, M.D. from F.U., I suspect, used to struggle similarly.  A fellow wordsmith ... but he also used to get into these paroxysms of frustration over events that he felt he couldn't control.  There was Chernobyl ... Black Monday ... Tiananmen Square and the Hillsborough soccer disaster in England (probably the most frustrating of all to him ... big nutty sports fan that I knew him to be back then).

Then locally, on at least one occasion ... I remember him during a meeting of our relatively small theater department -- convened specifically to address something or other which mattered then -- and M.D. literally sputtering, repeating, "All of the ... BULLSHIT ... has to stop!  We can't continue with this ... BULLSHIT.

"I would just like all of the ... BULLSHIT ... to end!"

"What are you referring to?" he was patiently asked.

"Just ... BULSHIT!  I can't explain the ... BULLSHIT."

Our poet laureate emerged from that, somehow, with a new patina of respect ... as rather than being mocked, he received backslaps, handshakes and commiserations after the meeting ... not to mention going home with my girlfriend that night!

It dawned on me then that by speaking up, be(com)ing a voice, no matter how eloquent (or not) your message ... you will be heard.

Ode to a Self-Absorbed Medical Worker

I've also come to understand all too well the immediate power and limitless reach of the World Wide Web ... a potentially devastating power and overreach, which is only now beginning to be recognized and kept in check:  lids are being placed back on steaming kettles, masks ripped off and new gates erected ...  not at all "ending" Freedom of Speech, but rather, returning to civil discourse.

This is overdue.

So instead of weighing in more than I already have about the stricken "Hero" Without Sense, Dr. Craig Spencer, and pulling punches entirely on the obnoxious and causelessly rebellious Nurse Kaci Hickox, I'll instead put forth the proposition that Shoshana Roberts has a fine ass ...

Shoshana Roberts has a fine ass.

Shoshana Roberts has a fine ass.

... I CANNOT say Shoshana Roberts has a FINE ASS!!!!!!

B.M. and P.M.

"My pain may be the reason for somebody’s laugh. But my laugh must never be the reason for somebody’s pain." - Charlie Chaplin

I have nothing but respect for Monica Lewinsky.

As the World Wide Web's "Patient Zero", she has suffered... felt pain... Cried, and died inside daily.  She has waited for exactly the right time and place...

She has taken up arms against haters and hatred, and perfectly played now the cards she got dealt.

The standing ovation Monica Lewinsky received at the Forbes' 30 Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia... some empathy, finally... The (finally) respectful hearing of things from her perspective -- the listening, versus insulting of her -- was fifteen years or so overdue.

I remember a disturbingly blunt and offensively direct hit on the Lewinsky debacle's whistleblower, that pot-calling-the-kettle-black backstabber, Linda Tripp...

Perhaps not a beauty queen, Miss Tripp wound up on the cover of one of New York's beloved rags, either the News or the Post, under the coffee-spitting headline, "It's Getting Ugly!"

To me, it's always been those three words, coupled with the unflattering head shot of Linda Tripp chosen to be plastered there on that front page beneath them, which was responsible for birthing, nay, shitting out, the "internet era", and foreshadowing our Rudest Generation to come.

The gum-smacking wisecrack of that tabloid headline -- the bestial boyish New Yorkese, at the public expense of a then unmarried, middle aged, childless woman, though somebody's daughter -- I will never forget;

the cheap, easy laugh I admittedly shared (hot coffee snorting out of both nostrils) with millions on that New York City, '90s morning never did sit well... and now, fifteen years later, looking back over the world's "timeline" since then -- of cruelty and inane and desperate cries for attention, feeding (or fed by?) a nation's cracked psyche -- the Before and After demarcation has not been more clear to me.

Never mind September 11th.  Simply (perhaps simplistically) put, the breakpoint in recent history, in my recent memory, is Before Monica (B.M.), when there were discretion, decorum and manners still; and Post Monica (P.M.), when name-calling, trash-talking, hating (and/or Yelping) anonymously, buffoon inappropriateness and lazy discrediting became society's norms - and somehow, OKAY.

The world turns, though.  What goes around...

Today, more than fifteen years P.M., I'm no longer the only one publicly decrying an epidemic of Asshole.  Nor am I alone anymore in my appreciation of Monica Lewinsky, and tacit acknowledgment of our P.M. world's penchant for piling on and bullying, wolf pack overkill.

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the Tyler Clementi Foundation to stop online bullying.

the Amanda Todd Legacy Society Ryan's Story

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