Monthly Archives: February 2014
Leggo My Egon, or Goodbye, Mr. Ramis, A Childhood Hero
I’m saddened, as are many, by the news of Harold Ramis’s death. If you’re in my generation, his contribution to Ghostbusters is the thing you automatically think of. I don’t know how many times I’ve answered the question, “What do you like to do?” with, “I collect spores, molds, and fungus.” Every now and then someone will get it. I mean, everyone wanted to be Peter Venkman, but I think most of us kinda wanted to be Egon Spengler in some way, too. At least I did.
As I grew up, I realized just how much Ramis did in terms of writing and directing. I saw him on a talk show in 1990/1991 (I keep thinking it was Pat Sajak’s late night talk show) where he was asked if he was the class clown in school. Ramis answered, “I wasn’t the class clown; I was the guy who wrote for the class clown.”
It’s something I held dear to me and utilized throughout high school, when I was super shy and quiet. I would mumble wise-ass remarks under my breath and my classmate Chadd would yell them out. The class would laugh, he’d get in trouble, and I’d be satisfied that I came up with something funny.
Today’s news of his death at 69 deeply saddened me.
It also made me wonder something….
There has been talk about Ghostbusters 3 for the last few years, and everyone has said that the hold-out was Bill Murray. But as I read about Ramis’s health issues, the time-frame coincides with news about a new Ghostbusters movie. Since it seems that everyone is surprised by Harold Ramis’s ill health outside of family and friends, I posit this:
Perhaps Bill Murray wasn’t the hold-out after all. Maybe with Ramis being sick, the idea was to sort of fake the press and fanboys and -girls out with Bill Murray accepting the “blame.” This would take any pressure off Ramis and he could recover, which it seems was expected. Perhaps Murray was doing his old friend a solid by taking any spotlight away from him. Aykroyd would play along until Ramis got better and they could all make the third movie.
I know, it’s far-fetched and silly, but the thought crossed my mind and what’s the point of having a blog if you can’t post fan speculation?
Either way, Harold Ramis is gone and the world has become a little less funny.
The Middle Ages, or How John Green Messed My Head Up
So last week I sat down to watch John Green‘s Vlogbrothers video called, “A Middle Aged Man.” The title should have tipped me off right from the start. But it didn’t. So there I sat, ready to be entertained by Green’s witty, intelligent, and machine-gun-paced monologue when he points out, right at the beginning of the video, that he’s a middle-aged man. The realization of that shocked him. I laughed. Ha! He’s right! He’s 36 years old, he is, indeed, middle–
WHAT?!?!
That’s not possible, because I’m 36. Not only that, but John Green and I were born on the exact same day. I mean, Steve Guttenberg and Rupert Grint also share a birthday with me, but they were born in different years. Guttenberg is 19 years older and Grint is 11 years younger. But John Green and I? Twins. From different mothers. And different locations.
Goddamn that got weird.
So it stands to reason if John Green is middle-aged, then [gulp] so am I.
Which began to make a lot of sense.
When I was a kid in the 1980s, there were a lot of movies and TV shows about adults reaching their mid-30s. I didn’t understand why at the time because in the mid-1980s, I was too young to get it. Between The Big Chill and Thirtysomething, various movies and TV shows where people went back to their hometown or told stories of their childhoods in the 1950s, there was a lot of it. As I got older, I saw even more of that as I read Stephen King’s novel It and novella The Body (the basis of the film Stand By Me) or listened to Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. which features “Glory Days” and “My Hometown,” amongst other songs looking back. Billy Joel was “Keepin’ the Faith” and it seemed everywhere you looked, people were coming to terms with this thing called adulthood.
That has been me for the last year. I’ve been longing, with an ache from my core, to return to those Saturday mornings when cartoons played on TV, and the Creature Double Feature aired on Channel 56 out of Boston. I’ve been longing to go back to the local mall as it looked back then, hit the Waldenbooks, and get myself stuff that isn’t available anymore. To be in a place, for just 24 hours, where the Internet didn’t exist to the public. When movies relied on more than CGI effects and explosions to hold a mass-audience’s interest. I mean, don’t get me wrong, 1984 was no walk in the park. And as Billy Joel sings in the aforementioned song, “The good old days aren’t always good/Tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.” Make no bones about it, I know I’m looking at things through rose-colored glasses.
But that feeling has been so strong for the last year or two, and I couldn’t figure out why. Until John Green pointed it out. I’m middle-aged. In 30 years, no one would be shocked if I dropped dead. Yeah, 66 isn’t exactly elderly anymore, but…. That’s a chilling sentence to me and I want so badly to delete it, but I’m going to keep it because it makes me uncomfortable.
I work with teenagers, I have a daughter who is turning 16 in two months, and another who is 15-months-old now. They help keep me young, all of them. But still….
There isn’t the kind of looking back now as there was in the 1980s because the Baby Boomer generation was so plentiful. They focused their attention on themselves and on the fact that the generation who would help change the world had become part of the establishment. Rampant crime, the destruction of business laws, the dissolution of personal freedoms, and the biggest chasm between the rich and everyone else since the Great Depression is what they left us with. They also left us with the Civil Rights Act, Equal Rights, free love, and the idea that we are both individuals and parts of a community. Oh, and the ability to be completely self-absorbed.
What will my generation leave behind? Cool status updates and Tweets? Some blogs? Superhero movies?
I don’t know, but I think it’s time I need to think about some things.
Hoping to Write Words, or The Virus: A Week In Review
I’m writing this on the iPad, so if there are major typos or just seemingly illiterate stuff that pops up, that’s probably why. I dare not try going into the office because I may wake–or alert–the Toddler, Genevieve.
This week, G has been sick. Last weekend her normal morning congestion was extremely bad and went on throughout the day, which made it not morning congestion but, rather, a cold. After a slight fever Monday night, Pamela stayed home with her on Tuesday and took her to the doctor. G has a virus that needs to work its way out.
Wednesday she went to day care but had a bad day, so I stayed home with her on Thursday. Back to day care yesterday. She’s a little better but is still sniffly, ooey-gooey snotty. The cough isn’t as bad. I put her down for nap about an hour ago and she wasn’t happy. She’s either sleeping right now or daydreaming; making only small sounds every now and then.
Due to her being sick and my worrying (our worrying), as well the the typical stressors of being a high school teacher, I dropped the ball this week on writing. I’d been doing real well with editing, revising, and rewriting the novel but this week I did nothing. I was too goddamn tired. I read a little before bed (Supergods by Grant Morrison) each night but that was all. With vacation being this coming week, I’m hoping to play a little catch-up. We’ll see.
How anyone with full-time jobs and families make the time to write is amazing to me. At least I’m just over halfway done with this draft of the book.
Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 