He’s home!

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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?

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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.”

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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 scientist 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 Roy’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.

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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.

Sheryl Crow on cover of Stuff

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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 as on the cover and there was a nice group of photos on the inside.

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.

 

 

Walnut bowls and T-shirt shops

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When the “outdoor advertising” boys thought Missouri might pass some restrictive laws against billboards, they got busy and started throwing up billboards all over the state, trying to get in under the wire. Turns out they had nothing to worry about. Their lobbyists came through. If Mount Rushmore was in Missouri, we’d have it plastered with billboards. If we were blessed with the Grand Canyon, we’d trash it up. I was born in Missouri and have lived here most of my life but I gotta say, we are one low-rent bunch of trailer park hillbillies. We are walnut bowls and T-shirt shops. It’s not enough that we have the worst highways in the country, we line them with monstrous billboards. I imagine travelers from more enlightened states passing through… “Honey! Wake up! You gotta see this! Nothing but billboards for as far as you can see.”

Ernest Tyler

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Ernest Tyler was executed on June 24, 1942, at the Missouri State Penitentiary. He was 37 years old and one 39 people executed by lethal gas between 1938 and 1965. He was convicted and sentenced to death for murder. Missouri switched to lethal injection when executions resumed in 1989 but the gas chamber is still located in a small stone building (called the “Death House”) on the grounds of the Jefferson City Correctional Center in Jefferson City.

Tyler, Ernest, 1948

On a wall outside the gas chamber is a group of photographs of the thirty-eight men –and one woman– that died in the gas chamber. I saw the photographs during a tour of the prison a couple of years ago. I was familiar with prison mug shots from working on a website (Capital Punishment in Missouri) but these images were so different from those of the men currently (or recently) on Missouri’s Death Row (they don’t like to call it that). Nobody seemed to know where the originals of the photographs were. I finally found them in the State Archives and the story of how they got there is interesting.

A former warden –upon retiring– took with him the prison files of those executed in the gas chamber. He was concerned the files, and whatever history they might contain, would be lost or discarded. He kept them at his home for a number of years and then turned them over to the State Archives. Where I found them. I spent several Saturday mornings going through each of the files and photocopying as much as I could afford. Along with the photographs, I found newspaper clippings; letters from the inmates; reports by prison personnel; and a variety of gruesome forms and reports related to the executions.

There was nothing remarkable about Ernest Tyler’s file. I don’t believe his case got much coverage in the press, at least there were no clippings. There was, however, a letter from Tyler to his father, a minister in Kansas City, Missouri. Prison officials apparently kept copies of outgoing correspondence. The letter was dated April 15th and Tyler was scheduled to die on April 24th, nine days later. In it, Tyler pleads with his father to come to Jefferson City to visit him before his execution. The context of the letter suggests (to me) that his father was working on some last-minute appeal to save his son. Or maybe he couldn’t bring himself to see his son on Death Row. We’ll never know. Here’s the letter:

“Hello Dad: How are you and mother today? I am not feeling so well. I received your letter, Dad. I am asking you again to please come down here, and please stop telling me about you are waiting on those papers. You may never hear from them, and when you do it will be too late, I will be looking for you or mother one by Sunday, and tell Mrs. Hill that I am praying and hoping Mr. Hill will get well, and also tell Mr. Hill, that I thank her from my heart for what they have done for me. There are no way that I can really tell her how much I thank her for her work. Dad please do something just once I ask, and not as someone else tell you to do. What I mean about I asked you to get someone to take the case back to court, but you had to go fooling around with Mr. Edon and now I am asking you to come down here and you keep telling me about you are waiting on an answer (from) them papers. Dad you will not know anything about what the Governor is going to do until the last day, which is the 23rd of this month, and on the night of the 23rd of this month I am to go down, then you will not have time to get here. So I will be looking for one of you Sunday if not before. I am writing Maron a letter, please give it to her…

I’ll close for this time, dad looking for you soon, your son,

Ernest Tyler, Hall B.B.”

Nothing in the file indicated whether Reverend Tyler visited his son. I’m guessing he did not.

The Biology of Typing

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I didn’t take biology in high school. My mom called the school and told them she didn’t think I needed to take the course. Turns out she was right. But she insisted I take typing. We used real typewriters. Manuals. There were a few electic typewriters in the back of the room but they seemed too exotic and high-tech to use. Every week or so we had these “timed typing” tests to see how many words-per-minute we could type. There some kind of formula…total words minus number of errors, something like that. I quickly figured out that my best shot was to go wide open, with no regard to errors. I frequently had the best score for a document nobody could read. This was 1964 and computers and word processors were years in the future.

Twenty years later I started working with a guy named Bob Priddy. Bob was (is) a broadcast journalist, author and –in 1984– power typist. His “office” was a cramped, dusty corner of an attic in Jefferson City, Missouri. The digital newsroom was still a few years off and Bob hammered out his news stories on a battered old Royal typewriter. The floor and walls shook when Bob was on deadline. No IBM Selectric for Bob, he was a manual guy all the way. Bob “keyboards” these days. And if he doesn’t pound the keys as he did back then, it’s only because they couldn’t take the punishment.

I recently came across an article by Roger Ebert (In Cyberspace, Writing Is A Performance) that reminded me of Bob and his battered Royal.

“A few moments ago I took the L.C. Smith down from the shelf and tried to type on it, and found that I could not. It’s just so klutzy. My fingers have to travel so far and work so hard to depress a key. You have to manually return the carriage at the end of every line. You have to hit the Tab key to indent. My fingers are no longer trained to hold down the Shift key.”

I love email. I’m trying to get comfortable with Instant Messaging but it’s a struggle. Knowing the other person is sitting there (“Mays is typing you a message”), waiting for me to respond. I find myself drifting back to typing class (“Fuck the typos, I’m going for speed!”).

I don’t think they make manual typewriters any more. Seems like I read that some place. I’m tempted to add, “too bad” but I can’t say why. Sort of like me and biology.

Boiler Room

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A great “sales” scene from Boiler Room (2000), written and directed by Ben Younger and staring Giovanni Ribisi, Ben Affleck, Scott Caan, Vin Diesel and Nia Long. The movie was just so-so, but the scene in which Ben Affleck’s character (Jim Young) explains things to a bunch of trainees in a small-time brokerage house is… chilling.

Jim Young: “Goddammit, you fuckin’ guys. I’m gonna keep this short, okay? You passed your sevens over a month ago. Seth’s the only one that’s opened the necessary forty accounts for his team leader. When I was a junior broker I did it in 26 days. Okay? You’re not sendin’ out press packets anymore. None of this Debbie the Time Life operator bullshit. So get on the phones, it’s time to get to work. Get off your ass! Move around. Motion creates emotion. I remember one time I had this guy call me up, wanted to pitch me, right? Wanted to sell me stock. So I let him. I got every fuckin rebuttal outta this guy, kept him on the phone for an hour and a half. Towards the end I started askin him buying questions, like what’s the firm minimum? That’s a buying question, right there that guys gotta take me down. It’s not like I asked him, what’s your 800 number, that’s fuckoff question. I was givin him a run and he blew it. Okay? To a question like what is the firm minimum, the answer is zero. You don’t like the idea, don’t pick up a single share. But this putz is tellin me you know, uhh, 100 shares? Wrong answer! No! You have to be closing all the time. And be aggressive, learn how to push! Talk to ’em. Ask ’em questions… ask ’em rhetorical questions, it doesn’t matter, anything, just get a yes out of ’em. If you’re drowning and I throw you a life jacket would you grab it? Yes! Good. Pick up 200 shares I won’t let you down. Ask them how they’d like to see thirty, forty percent returns. What are they gonna say, no? Fuck you? I don’t wanna see those returns. Stop laughing, it’s not funny. If you can’t learn how to close, you better start thinkin about another career. And I am deadly serious about that. Dead fuckin serious. And have your rebuttals ready, guy says call me tommorrow? Bullshit! Somebody tells you th-they money problems about buyin 200 shares is lying to you. You know what I say to that? I say, hey look, man, tell me you don’t like my firm, tell me you don’t like my idea, tell me you don’t like my fuckin neck tie, but don’t tell me you can’t put together 2,500 bucks. And there is no such thing as a no-sell call. A sell is made on every call you make. Either you sell the client some stock, or he sells you on a reason he can’t. Either way, a sell is made. The only question is: who’s gonna close? You or him?! Now be relentless. That’s it, I’m done.”

Kind of makes me wonder if Ben Younger liked the Glengarry Glen Ross scene as much as I did.