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Do you know where your high school senior ring is?

I have no idea where mine is but I do remember the last time I saw it. It was the summer of 1967 and I was playing the part of Og the Leprechaun in a community theater production of Finian's Rainbow (Francis Ford Coppola directed a film version starring Fred Astair and Petula Clark the following year). I had a little thing for Shannon Murphy --who played the part of Susan the Silent-- and my long-time girl friend caught us rehearsing lines during a break.

The confrontation was short but intense and punctuated by my (now ex-) girl friend throwing my senior ring back to (at?) me. The light outside the theater was poor and the ring struck me in the forehead, just above the eyes. Through the pain, I recall the sound of the ring ricocheting off into the night. I didn't bother to look for it. Ten or twelve years later, I received a call from someone at my old high school, informing me that someone in New Orleans had found the ring and called the school in an attempt to locate the owner. I never followed up to retrieve the ring (I still had the scar), but I always wondered what happened to it between the time it bounced off my head and showed up in The Big Easy. I've often thought it might make a decent plot device.

This was my best and only senior ring story for many years and I think I tell it with some humor. But I recently heard a better one. Like mine, it starts in Kennett, Missouri, which is the home of Ford's Hot Tamales. Kennett alums of a certain age will remember street venders selling Ford's Hot Tamales from a steaming pot on the corner across from the Palace Theater. The tamales --and related products-- were prepared from scratch at the family business there in Kennett. Family member and chili chef, Kenneth Ford, lost his KHS senior ring while whipping up a batch of Ford's Chili. Like mine, his showed up years later... in a block of frozen chili (in Texas?).

Okay, so it's not a great story. But there must be hundreds of stories like these. Wouldn't this make a decent website? If such site exists, I haven't found it yet. If you have, please let me know.

He's home!

Every night I arrive home, pull into the garage and get out of the car. Above me, Andie and Ripley are scrambling. I can hear their toe nails on the hard wood floors. Andie is frantically searching for a favorite toy. As I trudge up the steps, we're both making noises. They're moaning with anticipation at seeing one of their humans. I'm speaking that modified baby talk that child-free dog owners use with their pets. I always know what I'll see when I turn the corner and head up the last flight of stairs. The two Golden's, side by side, delighted to see one of their humans. Just one of life's little joys that I try not to take for granted.

What did he do?

If Sean Combs makes the leap to actor (or even movie star) you gotta think he'll drop all the hip-hop shit. "Puff Daddy," "Puffy," "P. Diddy"... I mean, the studios aren't gonna play that game. And I thought he did a nice job in the movie Monster's Ball. A powerful opening scene in which he says good-bye to his wife (Halle Berry) and his son... a quiet, powerful scene where he sketches his guards... and, finally, his execution in the electric chair.

Days later I found myself wondering, "What did Puffy's character do to get the chair?" But then, the movie wasn't about capital punishment, so it really didn't matter. P. Diddy getting the chair was a necessary plot element and there was no suggestion that he was innocent. Maybe the long, smoking, frying execution scene was simply telling us that lethal injection is more humane. And, having witnessed the execution of James Henry Hampton (March, 2000), I can tell you that it is. Mr. Hampton went very quietly, indeed.

My first thought was to do a Google search for websites dealing with capital punishment in the movies (The Chamber, Dead Man Walking, The Green Mile, I Want to Live, True Crime). I havn't found such a site yet but remain convinced there has to be one. What I'm wondering is, in how many of those movies, do they show us or tell us the crime for which the condemned is being executed?

I understand that, from an artistic standpoint, the writer or director is under no obligation to provide that background. If you feel that capital punishment is wrong in an of itself, you probably think the crime doesn't matter. But I'm not sure we can reach morally suportable conclusions about capital punishment without looking squarely at the crime.

I decided to witness the execution of James Henry Hampton, in part, because it seemed like something I should be willing to do if I was going to be part of a society that put certain criminals to death. Doesn't it follow that those opposed to the death penalty should be willing to visit a fresh crime scene? Step around the fresh blood and talk to the victim's family? Just once. If you still feel that capital punishment is wrong, fair enough.

Maybe I should cut some slack for the writers and director of Monster's Ball. The movie is about redemption, not capital punishment. Lawrence Musgrove told his son, "I'm a bad man. Don't be like me." And no matter how you feel about capital punishment, the electric chair is a bad way to go.

"I want more life, fucker."

I had my 54th birthday a week or so back and this line (from Ridley Scott's 1982 scil-fi classic, Blade Runner) kept running through my head. Replicant Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) goes to see Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel), the scientest that "designed" the not-quite-human Roy. Tyrell attempts to comfort Roy ("The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long - and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy.") but he's not having any of it and proceeds to poke Tyrell's eyes out. As Roy observes, "It's not an easy thing to meet your maker" but I thought he handled himself pretty well. He came for some answers --if not a solution to his problem-- and he was damn well gonna get them. The replicants of Blade Runner only got four years (I think Sean Young's character got more than that) but it wasn't so much how many years they got as that they knew when they were going to die. Maybe in the end, Pris (played by Daryl Hannah) got it right: "Then we're stupid and we'll die." We are and we will.

John Mays died last week.

It was about eight o'clock in the evening on Tuesday, March 5, 2002. He was 76 years old. He'd been ill and in a nursing home for the last few years. Lots of John's friends came to the funeral and it was comforting to see my father through the eyes of people he had known and cared about for fifty years. John was a radio announcer for about half of his 76 years and that's the way I prefer to remember him.

Kennett, My Home Town

A co-worker recently gave me a copy of Stuff Magazine. I'd never heard of Stuff and he explained "it's sort of like Playboy but everyone keeps their clothes on." He thought I'd be interested in this issue (March, I think) because Sheryl Crow was on the cover. Like me, Crow grew up in Kennett, Missouri, a small town in southeast Missouri. Aside from the Kennett connection, Crow looked extremely hot in the Stuff layout. She just turned 40 and decided it might be fun to do some cheese cake.

People from Kennett are understandably proud of Sheryl Crow. She is, without a doubt, the most famous person to call our little town home. I should point out that I do not know Sheryl Crow. I'm 14 years older and our paths never crossed.

But I share the community pride. And something more than pride. I mean, here's a Kennett girl that saw movies at the Palace Theatre (just like me)... probably sat in Ms. Mitchell's algebra classroom (just like me)... went to dances at the American Legion Building (just like me)... standing next to Bob Dylan. Having a beer with Keith Richards.

That's just... that's just too much to get my mind around. That somehow creates a connection between the very real (and small) world in which I grew up... with a fictional world filled with the icons of my youth. It ramps up the "six degrees of separation" thing to an impossible level (my wife went to church with a woman that parties with Bob Dylan). That's just too damned close.

But if it's disorienting for me, someone that doesn't know Sheryl Crow, what must it be like for some guy that took her to the high school prom? Or gave her first good-night kiss after a car-date? I mean, you're watching the Grammy's and turn to your friends and say, "Great song, but she wasn't much of a kisser in high school." There ought to be some kind of support group for people that were close friends with those that went on to real fame.

"Hi, my name is Steve. I used to beat the shit out of Tom Cruise every afternoon in junior high."

"Believe it or not, Madonna was terrible at sex."

It's one thing to sit next to some big star on the plane ("You'll never guess who I met on the way out?")... but to know that Fate took the geeky kid from your civics class and made him rich and famous, well, that's too much.

I'm really glad I don't know (didn't know) Sheryl Crow. I'm glad she came from my hometown, but it would be too hard to have known her. And liked her. I wonder how many calls or letters Crow gets from her old chums.

"Hi, Sheryl. This Janice Linmeister... from Kennett! We took Home Ec together. Yeah, that's right, but I've gained some weight since then. Listen, Leroy and me and the kids are coming out to L-A and we'd love to stop by and say hello. Maybe we could go out and get some beers, you know, like old times."

(Shudder) No, I don't think Sheryl Crow gets many of those. I hope not. For me, she's more real on the front of the Style section of USA TODAY, having a Heineken with Bob-Fucking-Dylan. Or performing before a world-wide audience on the Grammy's. That's the only place I've ever known her. But she's from Kennett. Just like me.

PS: If I did know Sheryl Crow, I'd ask her to record a new version of Kennett's official song. This one is really old and who better to re-do it?