GRABBINGSAND

Maybe I just find old photographs fascinating. 2-dimensional revisitations to times past, moments lost, opportunities presented.

But most of all, several people seem to have this curiosity about what I was like growing up. Others just never believe me when I claim to have had quite the substantial mullet in the early 90s.

And so, maybe one or more of these will interest.

1979
1983
1991
1992

If I told you what I said. If I told you that the phrase that fell out of my mouth after watching this movie was “I would rather have seen another showing of Battlefield Earth” — would you believe me? I don’t even believe it myself, but I said it. No hesitation. Barely a stutter. This movie is worse than Battlefield Earth.

Or maybe I am being too harsh. After all, it has Kevin Costner and Kurt Russell in it. Oh, and let’s not forget Christian “Will Work for Food” Slater, David “Idiot and Proud” Arquette and Howie “Radio Shack Pitchman” Long. But it is easy to do, as each one of these seeming stars gets only a handful of onscreen time each. Arquette barely gets in his five or six lines, each of them delivered with the skill and verve that only a spokesman for CALL-ATT can muster, before he ends up a riddled corpse lying in a deep mud puddle in the desert. Mud. Desert. Hmm. Nevermind.

And they should all feel so lucky. Costner is chewing scenery like its beef jerky. Heck, he even chews beef jerky, literally. The basic premise, I suppose, is that Costner and Russell did time together in the Big House. Now they are both out of prison, and so it must be time for the Big Job. But then there is the whole Elvis impersonator thing. And this odd subplot about Elvis having two bastard sons, and they might just be… Then you have Ice-T show up for about three minutes to eat a jelly sandwich and do a bad Desperado impression. Oh, and Courtney Cox Arquette points her ass at the camera many times, and then there is this kid that witnesses all manner of brutality and hones his pickpocketing technique.

And you sit there watching Costner, hoping he might do something cool, since the sideburns do serve him well. But he never does. Then you turn to Russell, pray he saves it, and you realize that he is nothing but a bad Swayze with bluer eyes.

Did I tell you yet about the scorpions? This is what told me in the first 30 seconds that this film was going to disappoint me. First, some history.

Sam Peckinpah. Directed “The Wild Bunch” — the pivotal Western film that beautifully captured the end of the cowboy era. A landmark film. One that ends in a famous and bloody standoff between the anti-heroes and the not so just authorities. It is amazing. And it begins with scorpions, battling in the desert sand, much to the delight of sagebrush children watching closely. Real scorpions. No winners. Analogous to the fate that awaits the Wild Bunch.

Fast forward. Demian Lichtenstein. Director of such films as… well, one film actually. 1997. Called “Lowball” — reviewed simply in the IMDB with “In a word, avoid.” I never saw it. And now he begins “3000 Miles” with scorpions. 3-D scorpions. Looking as realistic as an airbrushed mural on the side of a 1978 Ford Econoline van. And these cyber-scorpions, well, they fight you see. One white, one black. And this is all filmed with the finesse of a bad Metallica video, perhaps even worse. And it looks hideous. What makes it worse is that the black scorpion figures later into the plot. Sort of.

It is bad. Not even “Let’s have a few beers and watch this” bad. The cinematography is poor and misplaced. The score sounds like scraps brushed from the floor of Jan Hammer (remember Miami Vice), and the Elvis tracks they managed to acquire aren’t even that good. Not even “Viva Las Vegas” is to be found. The writing is hackneyed and misogynistic.

In a word. Avoid.

You hear it everyday, or perhaps only I do. But someone has to look at you from time to time, smile in that curious way, perhaps shake their head and say “Where did you come from?” And usually I have no pat answer, or I come up with something ridiculously to disarm the question. But you have to sit down eventually and ask that question of yourself. Where did I come from? Pardon the dangling participle, but you have to formulate most of that answer before you can determine a direction for continued movement.

So me. Where did I come from? From my parents, a wonderful couple still married after over forty years, mom and dad to two sons born thirteen years apart. Different challenges met beautifully. My mother is of Lookout Mountain stock, though she made her way through business school to land a job at TVA, one that would last her adult life. One she still tends even now, post retirement. My father is from South Georgia, high school education bringing him into his own life’s work at Combustion Engineering, moving him from third shift boilermaker to quality control supervisor. He is also retired, and also still works.

I resemble my paternal grandfather, Albert Ezra. His photo taken presumably at Tybee Island in 1917 is kindly familiar, since I look at the same face in the mirror eighty some odd years later.

He fought in World War I in the Sixth Calvary. Apparently he was a communications officer in France, but he never liked talking about the time he spent there. Often he would reduce the experience to three simple observations: “We were cold, we had to steal cabbages from farms, the Red Cross took our food.” But he had tons of other stories of growing up, courting my grandmother, going fishing. He loved the Braves during their dryest spell in the early 80s. So much so that we had cable television brought up the steep driveway to his house near Chickamauga Park. I wish often that I would have asked more questions, begged for more stories, but he was there for our family until the age of 98.

So now I am struggling to do what I can here in Atlanta. My brother has a wife and two amazing sons, my nephews that I adore. My cousin has a baby on the way, and perhaps she will take my request and time the birth to match my impending March birthday. After all, I read an excerpt from “The Velveteen Rabbit” at her wedding, so why not do me this little favor? Our family has gotten into the habit of celebrating our heritage and love with reunions on a semi-regular basis. And little by little, my brother appears to be making headway on some kind of family tree. So eventually, we will all know where we have been.

But in the meantime, I have nephews to amuse. And that gives me more hope that I can often handle.

it’s no fun being sick. i mean, i am sure there are those hypochroniacal types that get their life’s meaning from an assumed appearance of consumption or malaise, and i remember those girls from high school that would feign sickness around lunchtime only to return the next late spring morning with a fresh tan. i always wondered why the guidance counselors, the ersatz truant officers, never went on a quick patrol of the sun-baked front yards near our school. or maybe they did, and seeing the blissful girls laid out with their radio’s blaring local KZ-106fm, they just drove on by, missing their own young afternoons. but to return, it is no fun being sick. especially after you have left high school, left college.

and this is the second time that something has hit me in the middle of a performance run. colds always have the worst timing, and the last time one struck me during a theatrical effort was in college. 1993. and i was the lead, playing jack in ‘the importance of being earnest’ at berry. a fun role, one that i could vamp and stride in, and for once we had phenomenal costumes. the black mourning outfit i wanted to steal. great velvet top hat with a long scarf hanging down the back, magnificient black frock coat. and here i was, second and last week of the production, my voice reduced to a vampiric growl and my face pale from fever. the backstage crew would mock me on headset, saying i looked green and sounded like count chocula. i didn’t even go to class that week, just so i could get up enough energy to make it to the theatre.

but these days, you have to go to work, you have to leave the comfort of your inherited couch and just get up and go. you can make up lost classes, but employers are less forgiving of lost time. and it is expensive, because you have to go into every cold forgetting mostly what worked the last time you were ill. and even if you do remember the orange juice, the chicken soup, the echinacea, the dayquil, there is always a new and improved product that promises to take your nasal blues away. so you buy that as well. we are suckers that way. and i am one of those who holds this paranoid belief that there actually is a cure for the common cold out there, but its locked away in a mutual trust owned by the pharmaceutical companies. how many businesses would crumble if the cold could be eliminated with one simple pill? so far i have purchased robitussin, dayquil, tylenol cold, theraflu, hall’s defence drops, ricola’s zinc’alyptus, breathe right strips and kroger brand nyquil.

and it makes you do things, fires your sense of the immediate. if one thing isn’t working, you must find another that does, and soon. like the way it inspired me to drive to kroger at 3:30am in search of afrin or somethinganything to clear up my head so i could sleep for pete’s sake. so i go, narrowly avoiding becoming a paint spot on the street due to a weaving big rig, and the patrons with me were almost worth the trip. strange single men shopping like they missed their ex-wives. pretty pierced girls with shocking red hair shopping in pairs, coming from clubs or nightly occupations. hard to tell. determined stock boys sitting on boxes of canned vegetables, lining up the peas side by side in even rows. a girl and a boy mopping at the entrance, keeping an interesting rhythm while speaking nonstop in spanish. for those images, i can be grateful.

but i am feeling better. perhaps i shouldn’t complain. perhaps i should just be grateful for the brakes i had to apply while recovering. singer david wilcox has this brief bit about the meaning of a head cold. ‘you’ve been pulled over by the reaper and let off with a warning.’ slow down. look around. take a bit more time.

and i can breathe again.