Big Feet, Tiny Steps
I used to like Denis Leary a whole lot. No Cure for Cancer was played over and over again in my sophomore year dorm room, up at the old Chestnut Hill University, and with good cause: Its riffs on drugs and smoking and the anger and cynicism in which they were steeped made much more sense at college than they ever would have in the loose confederation of neighborhoods that made up the “town” I grew up in. Loved my house and the trees that surrounded it, but one might rightly say our locality was lacking in spirit.
For the uninformed, Denis Leary was accused by many in comedy for stealing the persona and certain joke templates and subjects of Bill Hicks, a bold man and a great comedian. Look it up, it’s spelled out elsewhere and while important, it would be yet another tangent in this whirlpool of information called this afternoon’s post.
One of the last lines of No Cure for Cancer, which I guardedly listen to from a distance, yet can still quote, is that one must live life “moment to moment.” It’s in that spirit that I’ve taken to watching DVDs that I’ve always wanted to see but didn’t take the time to watch, which is more than many of the DVDs on this heretofore unwritten list deserve.
It’s on my mind because I finally just watched, of all movies, The Quick and the Dead. Look that up, too, it’s a modern Western from ‘95, with Sharon Stone. I watched the first bit of it and was reminded of 3:10 to Yuma, another much more recent modern Western, starring Christian Bale and Russell Crowe — who of course was also in The Quick and the Dead, since he showed up onscreen as I was watching it.
Is there a message in here? Sure – you never know what’ll turn up under a rock unless you pick it up. Turns out that not only was Gary Sinise in the movie, but so was Tobin Bell of the Saw movies, Roberts Blossom from Home Alone (Old Man Marley, bless him), and two or three other characters that showed up in a video game I used to love, Red Dead Revolver. Three and a half hours ago, I could have watched Eight Men Out (not Ate Men Out, another film entirely) and this post, were it written, would have been entirely different.
If I watched neither movie, would I have written?
With all these damn distractions nowadays, the next terrible TV show understandably buried in basic cable, the celebrity scandals documented by gossip site after gossip site, all of which I frequent, it’s easy to overlook the more obvious truths of life, the remedy to which is my Solstice Resolution for this calendar year: Clearing away the brush and endeavoring, however slowly — carefully — deliberately, to discern what truly needs to be done, what merits my attention, what habits have been overfed and which causes lie malnourished.
Baby steps. Of size 14 feet.
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