Personal Journal

Losing Heroes

I’m one of the more vocal anti-celebrity cult personalities in the world. I think television does so much bad for the human species that it’s not worth having (that being said, I have my digital cable package, and I don’t want to give it up). People in this society can tell you more about who won at the Emmys/Oscars/Grammys than they can about their current President, Congress, and governors, and that says a lot about the kind of people we are.
I carry little wounds for my species. Disappointments borne of unique realizations that we’re SO FLAWED! So flawed that I don’t know if we can consider ourselves worthy of meta-evolution (which I think is what god’s ultimate plan is for intelligence, to develop a truly benevolent species that shepherds as well as it progresses).

That being said, sometimes something from the “entertainment” world really makes me pause to reflect on who I am, and how the arts influenced it. I’m beholden to the arts. Caravaggio, Pink Floyd and Dire Straits, “Jim Ignitowski” from Taxi, “Dr. Johnny Fever” from WKRP in Cincinatti, Barnes and Elias from “Platoon”… When I look at what I uniquely am as a human being, the arts had a stronger influence on me in my development than philosophy and theology did at the same time. Without those influences, I wouldn’t have had my intellect awakened, I wouldn’t have had my soul shaken so that I could be elevated above the pablum that is the collective voice of the mean intelligence of my fellow Americans (yes, I guess I do look down on wide swathes of this country because they’re stupid, inefficient, and unconcerned with making themselves more than what they are. I despise those three things.

But when John Ritter died, and now Robert Palmer, I feel a certain sense of loss for the world. That’s most peculiar from Ritter, who really never produced a great work of art (at least that moved me). I watched Three’s Company as a young boy, pre-teen. In retrospect, most of the show’s contrivances were repetitive and predictable. Some of the comedy was passable (in particular Don Knotts made a great showing for himself in that show. God, why did ascots exist?) I never watched his new TV series (he had a failed sitcom in the 90s, Hooperman, which was very good, as I remember it, but alas, was too intelligent for that medium). Maybe it was because he was an icon from my childhood, and those are supposed to be untouchable, like parents are (and maybe it’s because, growing up without a father at home, Ritter’s “Jack Tripper” was a kind of man that I COULD in fact look up to and respect).

I was reading a requiem to him on National Review Online, and I think it was in that review that I realized why I feel the world is a lesser place without him. First, the thing I didn’t know about Ritter. He was prolific. Even after a 7-year stint on a sitcom that by all accounts, was an anachronism, he found ways to work on stage, in some movies, and in a wide variety of ways. He never became bitter about the stereotype that would follow his acting career due to having had a sitcom. He accepted that, and moved on, never complaining. That’s totally admirable to me. But the thing I did know, and didn’t put my finger on until I read that review was this:

“Jack Tripper” was attempting to be “a player” but he was always a good man. He was always grounded in that Navy background. He always had his dream of becoming a greatly respected chef. He tried for the women, but he was always innocent. He was always trying to do the right thing. And as a boy in the middle of transitions, that goodness was something consistent that sustained my soul in the absence of anything else that really could (which has to do with what was happening in my family in those times).

For Robert Palmer, well, he penned one of the most legendary lines in all of Rock’n’Roll:
“She’s so fine, there’s no tellin’ where the money went.”
I tell people who don’t know me, when we start to discuss formative influences, that I don’t keep many pictures. Pictures have never really resonated in me. But I have hundreds of CDs, and if you pick up any one of them and ask me to play you a song from them, I can play one and tell you exactly what it reminds me of. I can tell you where I was when it penetrated me, when it became a unique experience in my life, and how the music and the lyrics touched me and helped awaken me to becoming the man I still hope yet to be.
I think with that Palmer song, “Simply Irresistible” it was after the breakup with the Ice Bitch (a nickname given to one Julie Vaughan, a former girlfriend), and I had to laugh. Yes indeed, how could I wonder where the Ice Bitch had spent my money when all I wanted to do was pour myself across her body and evaporate into steam to end my burning for her
I shouldn’t get started on that tangent this morning about Julie.

Both of these men were in their 50s, quite young by any standard. Both talented and underestimated by all but their inner circles and closest fans. You have touched my life, and will never be gone. Valle con dios, amigos.


It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn