The Monuments Men

My wife is on nights at the hospital, so that means it is time for another round of “David Catches Up on Movies!” Last time, I watched some sci-fi films that I had managed to miss. This time, I am just grabbing anything that piques my interest.  I was again too tired on Wednesday night to watch a movie.  And after my lack of appreciation for the violent films, I decided to pick up "The Monuments Men" with George Clooney and a ton of other people.

I like George Clooney.  I mean, I don't know him or anything.  But I like him as an actor and entertainment personality.  One of my favorite movie franchises is the Oceans trilogy.  I have enjoyed several Clooney starring, directed, or produced projects (Good Night and Good Luck, The Descendants, Leatherheads, Up in the Air, Out of Sight).  I also like the fact that he is concerned about the world around him.  So whenever Clooney is involved in something, it immediately gains my attention.


I like Matt Damon.  Again, I don't know the guy personally.  I enjoy his movies.  Obviously, I am a big fan of Oceans.  I've also loved Damon in We Bought a Zoo, the Bourne Trilogy, The Good Shepherd, True Grit.  He's a good actor.  In addition, he also is very interested in helping the world around him.  Which is great.

I like Bill Murray.  One of my favorite movies is Groundhog Day.  I think Murray is a severely under appreciated actor.  I like John Goodman.  I like Cate Blanchett.  You see where this is going.  When I saw the marketing for The Monuments Men, it seemed like a surefire hit.  The cast is astounding.  Clooney directed it.  It is set in World War II, which has such a rich depth of available stories.  And there appeared to be a kind of Oceans Eleven vibe to it.  The previews seemed pretty humorous.  "'I appear to have stepped on a land mine.'  'Well what did you do that for?'"  And I mean, look at the tagline for the movie.  "It was the greatest art heist in history."  Good stuff, right?

Then I finally got to watch The Monuments Men.  I honestly felt like the movie suffered from the same problem that Clooney himself suffers from.  I never know when to take the film, or the actor, seriously.  Clooney has that little smirk, even when he is isn't in a funny movie.  I have had a hard time in some of his stuff because he doesn't really have an intensity switch.  The movie itself had the same problem.  Was it a lighthearted take on a marginal element of World War II?  Or was it something more serious?  

If you look at the cast, it is heavily loaded with actors very comfortable with comedy: Goodman, Murray, Clooney, Bob Balaban (Friends, Christopher Guest movies), Jean Dujardin (The Artist), even Damon.  The previews were heavy on the comedic elements.  The score by Alexandre Desplat had this kind of playful quality.  It seemed to be written for a old-school farce or something.  All of that is swirling around against the backdrop of the horrors of war.  

Then there was another problem, one that the characters IN the film seemed to wrestle with most of the time.  These guys were scampering around Europe trying to save works of art while there were millions of people trying to, you know, not die.  World War II saw some of the worst atrocities in human history.  The violence was so brutal (referring back to Saving Private Ryan, mentioned in my post the other day).  Concentration camps, ethnic cleansing, internment camps, atomic bombs, relentless bombing, starvation.  War is despicable.  World War II was beyond despicable.  As these artists are racing around, they try to get help from "real soldiers."  These war weary men look at the artists like they are crazy.  One officer responds to a request help with, "I know exactly what you want.  You want me to tell my guys, who are trying to fight off an enemy force, to risk being killed by not blowing up certain buildings."  It really was ludicrous.  

But, on the other hand, you could understand what these guys were saying as well.  Hitler didn't just want to win the war or take over the world.  He didn't even want to just kill the Jews.  He wanted to erase them from history.  Clooney's character keeps saying that it is important to preserve the culture of a people as well.  They make good points.  But, as one commenter on imdb.com said, "Who cares.  Twelve million people died."  Point taken.
The movie would be humming along, these guys sparring with and razzing each other.  Then, all of the sudden, someone would get killed.  Or they would find giant barrels full of gold teeth pulled out of the mouths of Jewish people killed by the Germans.  Then they would go back to goofing around.  Then they would rush some guy into a battlefield hospital who was destroyed by artillery fire.  Then they would flirt with a French resistance fighting artist.  It was weird.  

I have had a couple of days to think about the movie.  And I still don't really know what exactly Clooney was trying to do with the film.  Were we supposed to sympathize with the artists and their quest to save over three million pieces of art?  Or were we supposed to think that their efforts were juvenile when compared with the massive cost of the war?  There were times when it felt like these guys were being mocked by the movie itself - putting a huge discovery of art in juxtaposition with the barrels of teeth, for example.  At other times, it was clear that they were the heroes, protecting what no one else realized was even important.  But even the overall villainy wasn't clear.  Hitler was the ultimate bad guy.  He was the one behind all of the atrocities - the destruction, the Jewish persecution, the theft and/or destruction of tons of irreplaceable artwork.  But, the most tense moments in the film came when these artists were faced with a confrontation with the Soviets, who were planning on taking all the Nazi-stolen art back to Russia to make up for their losses.  And the people that raised the most ire for me were actually the allied military leaders who completely ignored the Monuments Men's warnings about several dangers, which led to the deaths of multiple people.  Again, it was weird.

Needless to say, I was very disappointed with the film.  It was extremely uneven in tone and message.  The acting was nice.  It was like having a good time with friends, chatting and hanging out.  Then those fun times were punctuated by shockingly horrific events.  Only, then we were expected to just go back to having a good time.  Why?  That's the question I was left asking.  Were we supposed to take on a bigger message, like how easily it is to just forget the horrors of the world around us in favor of what we see as important?  That makes me feel like the Monuments Men were completely misguided in their efforts.  Or were we supposed to realize that the cost of war is more than just lives and structural damage, but also the heart, souls, and culture of the people involved?  In that case, the soldier artists were definitely heroes.  I desperately wanted to like the film.  I wanted to see it as important.  But it felt like the movie itself kept me from succeeding in my mission.

Olympus Has Fallen

My wife is on nights at the hospital, so that means it is time for another round of “David Catches Up on Movies!” Last time, I watched some sci-fi films that I had managed to miss. This time, I am just grabbing anything that piques my interest.  I was too tired on Monday night to watch a movie.  Our movie this time is the Gerard Butler terrorist action flick "Olympus Has Fallen."

One of the most terrifying books that I ever read also ranks as one of my favorites.  I have never been a person who likes horror or thriller novels or movies.  I have never read a Stephen King book, and the only movies of his I have seen were Shawshank Redemption and Running Man.  So there aren't a lot of books that scare me.  They end up being things rooted in real life - that I can picture happening in a horrific manner.  This book was called Under Siege.  No, it was not the basis of the Stephen Seagal warship movie.  It was a novel by Stephen Coonts (not Dean Koontz, horror writer).  Coonts was another author during the rise of the techno-thriller.  You had Tom Clancy (as I discussed in my last post) and Michael Crichton.  They were the top of the chain.  Then you had some other authors in that realm - Coonts, old school Dan Brown (before The DaVinci Code), Larry Bond, and Harold Coyle.

Stephen Coonts wasn't a bad author.  His books were hardly as good as the best Clancy or Crichton books.  But they were exciting and entertaining.  The main character was Jake Grafton.  He was a fighter pilot, and we first met him in Vietnam during Flight of the Intruder.  That was turned into a disappointing movie, which killed the Grafton series.  Coonts wrestled with the same protagonist problem as Clancy - namely, character promotion.  Grafton went from fighter pilot to government official during the books.  Other characters had to move to the front of the action.  Those people were not always that interesting, unfortunately.

Under Siege, though, was really good.  It centered on a wide-scale terrorist attack on the US Government.  Keep in mind, this was pre 9/11.  The world was a completely different place then.  The USofA was untouchable.  We were still portrayed as the "good guys" in films.  Everyone didn't assume there was always some conspiracy at play, so the movies and books reflected that.  The fall of the Soviet Union made it a little more difficult to have a quick, go-to villain.  But there were mysterious Islamic extremists that made for a handy bad guy.

The thing about Coonts' set up was that it was so, well, believable.  The main antagonist got a list of government officials to kill.  He got paid for each one that he successfully took out.  The goal was to cause massive instability and panic in the country by causing upheaval in the government.  He started by trying to assassinate President George Bush (the First).  He knew that if he attacked someone else first, the security around the President would just clamp down.  So he fired a missile at the Marine One helicopter from a park.  Then he drove to the Senate Majority Leader's house and shot him on his front step.  The next day, he gunned down the Supreme Court Chief Justice on a freeway, driving to work.  Then he took shots at several cabinet members with a sniper rifle, killing a couple.  Everything happened in such quick succession that the country just freaked out.  The DC area turned to bedlam.  Martial law, riots, mob justice.  It was terrifying.  I actually had to put it down a couple of times because it was too realistic.

I bring this up because I was reminded of the book's premise as I watched Olympus Has Fallen.  I am hardly saying this movie was realistic. I'm sure a Washington insider could find fifty plot holes in ten minutes. But the setup was, I thought, brilliant. 

The opening scenes with Gerard Butler, President Harvey Dent and his family, and the surefire tragedy to come were decent. I guess they were important to show how close Butler's Secret Service agent was to the First Family before the family tragedy. But, as far as other characters go, it was kind of pointless. I didn't get connected to the majority of Secret Service guys because they all looked the same. Seriously. They all looked like they had played linebacker at a Big Ten school and gone into government work. I honestly couldn't remember which ones were in both the opening scene and the later scenes. The only one who stood out was Dylan McDermott Mulrooney. He didn't do much, but I knew he was too big of a name to be cannon fodder. 

The movie really picked up when the terrorist plan kicked into gear. It was thirteen minutes of insanity. I know it was thirteen minutes because the main bad guy says to the President Dent, "Standard deployment time for the emergency teams is fifteen minutes. We took the White House in thirteen."  The plan was brilliant. Of course, it must have taken a massive amount of planning and financial resources to make it work. But that is neither here not there. If you start looking for logic in action movies.... Let's just say that's a fool's errand. 

It started with the South Korean delegation arriving for a crucial meeting with President Harvey Dent. They arrive with a legit security detail headed up by, hey!, Dermott McDylan Mulrooney. Told you he was coming into play. There is a crowd of Koreans outside the White House showing their support or protesting or whatever crowds do. A nondescript C130 cargo plane zooms from Chesapeake, Virginia (thanks handy info labels!) towards DC. Air command finally realize that this plane isn't supposed to be there and they scramble jets to take it down. Oops. Hidden doors on the side open to show mini guns that take out the planes. This causes a chain reaction. The President and His Cabinet are hustled down into the bunker below the White House. Being the nice guy he is, El Presidente also brings the Korean Prime Minister and his detail, against protocol, naturally. More jets are scrambled. The C130 starts firing all kinds of guns, missile deterrents, missiles all over the place. The jets are crashing. Crowds are getting strafed. Chaos. The plane finally crashes through the Washington Monument and onto the White House lawn. Explosion. Fire. Chaos. 

The crowd outside the White House aren't what they seem. They are armed terrorists. They start firing all over the place, taking out Secret Service and military personnel. Suicide bombers blow themselves up at the gate. Two garbage trucks come hurdling down Pennsylvania Avenue. They blow up their tires so they can't be moved. More gunmen are hidden inside. An armored car comes along and blows the gate open. The gunmen all stream in and shoot all the security personnel. It is horrific. The editing gives it a relentless feel. There is wave after wave of attacks, each successive one to nullify the next safety protocol. Whether or not it was plausible, it felt possible. It brought that same feeling of horror from the book I mentioned. 

Peppered through this we see how Gerard Butler manages to get into the White House to do his Die Hard John MacLaine impersonation. The rest of the movie is Butler trying to save the President, idiotic military and government officials making idiotic decisions, the North Korean terrorist trying to access the US Cerberus system to blow up all American nukes, and lots and lots of murder.

This is where things get a bit uncomfortable to me.  And it is probably why I didn't watch this movie when it was out in the theaters.  I find it very difficult to just overlook wanton violence any more.  There was a time when I had no qualms about watching a movie with people getting massacred all over the place.  I've seen more than my share of violent action movies.  Trust me, that was my main movie preference for many years.  I remember going with a group of friends to see Saving Private Ryan.  That is the most violent movie I have ever seen.  There have been stories for years about how the only reason the movie got an R rating instead of NC-17 was because it was made by Stephen Spielberg.  Some of the girls who went with us felt ill and left, or sat with their eyes closed in the theater.  It was horrific, but I was okay.  Things change, though.  I have never seen Saving Private Ryan again.  I used to watch Schindler's List every year.  I can't even remember when I last watched it.  It is hard for me to swallow that level of atrocity any more.

When I say that, people will often respond with, "You do realize they are fictional, right?  This is just a movie."  Not always, they aren't.  Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List weren't fictional.  On screen, it is a representation, but it was based on truly horrific things that really happened.  But even when a movie is fictional, like Olympus Has Fallen, it is hard for me to disconnect.  I watch movies in a different way than a lot of people.  I think about them and dissect them.  I try to dive in and relate to what is going on.  It probably comes from the way I read books.  So when I see a jet in a movie crash into a neighborhood, I don't think, "Oh cool.  That jet just blew up."  I remember in Orlando a few years ago when a small plane crashed into a house in Sanford and killed the kids who lived there.  That family didn't think it was cool.

That is the problem I have with this type of film (and I include disaster flicks in this genre).  It just isn't that entertaining for me.  I don't enjoy watching cities get wiped out like in Independence Day any more.  It is too hard for me to forget the images of real planes crashing into real buildings and real people running for their lives when those real buildings fell into real streets.  How can anyone who lived through 9/11 NOT think about those things?  How can you not think of the horrific school shootings?  Or the Fort Hood shooting?  Those things aren't cool.  I have a hard time disconnecting my feelings about that just because it is on screen.  I am a father of three kids.  I can't turn that off in a theater.  Sure, I try when there is a movie I want to see.  But I still cringed when New York got obliterated in The Avengers or when DC got messed up in X Men 17 this summer.  But there is a level of violence, of brutality, that just crosses a line for me.  I remember feeling that during Dark Knight Rises.  I love Batman and I loved the Nolan trilogy.  However, the horrific brutality in the third one just made it hard to appreciate the film as much as I wanted to.  As bad as this sounds, it wasn't just killing someone.  It was battering them and really hurting them first.  That is something I just can't get behind.

So, when it comes to Olympus Has Fallen, I can appreciate the creativity of some parts of the movie.  The execution of the attack on the White House was impressive.  Gerard Butler did a fine job saving the President.  I appreciated that the movie didn't feel it necessary to have a "US Government is really behind this" subplot.  I get tired of those.  The big lesson I got from the film, though, is that I guess I'm not really in a place any more to enjoy films like this.  There are a bunch of movies that I have wanted to see - even ones I planned on watching in the next few days.  (Lone Survivor and Zero Dark Thirty, to name a couple.)  It feels like visiting a city I used to live in and discovering that I don't like being there anymore.  I moved for a reason, I suppose.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

My wife is on nights at the hospital, so that means it is time for another round of “David Catches Up on Movies!” Last time, I watched some sci-fi films that I had managed to miss.  This time, I am just grabbing anything that piques my interest. Our first offering was the Kenneth Branagh directed spy-thriller, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.

I got hooked on Tom Clancy books when I was in Middle School. A friend of mine was reading them, so I asked my dad if I could borrow his books. That was an advantage of having a book-devouring father that never got rid of the books he finished. They would spill out of a bookcase in my parents’ room onto the floor. You can say a lot of things about my dad, but he was a voracious reader all the way until the end.

I started with Hunt for Red October. It really was my first “grown up” novel. I was fascinated by it. Tom Clancy was a master of the techno-thriller. And his protagonist, Jack Ryan, was the kind of guy a nerdy kid could get behind. He wasn’t a superhero or a muscle-bound behemoth. He was an analyst that got dragged into operations. He had a doctorate in economics and had a different way of seeing current events. When you combined that with Clancy’s bizarre ability to describe military hardware that “didn’t exist,” you had a great book. His next work, Red Storm Rising, is still one of my favorite books ever. It wasn’t part of the Jack Ryan timeline, was never made into a movie, and will never be made into a film. The subject material (Soviet Russia, mostly) and 1980s technology means that it is pretty irrelevant now. I still remember Clancy describing the Frisbees - stealth bombers that eerily matched the real US stealth bomber that no one knew about yet. The whole book gave me chills.

Clancy threw out a prequel next, Patriot Games. It was another big hit and a major literary star was born. The US Government got tired of fighting Clancy, since his information all came from public sources. So they started to buddy up to him. This gave him unprecedented access for a writer of books in this genre. He used this to his advantage in Clear and Present Danger and Cardinal in the Kremlin. But things started to unravel pretty soon. His book swelled in size. It almost seemed like he was drunk on his own military and technological knowledge. By the time The Sum of All Fears came out, the books were almost unreadable. I was hoping he was righting the ship with Without Remorse and Debt of Honor. But, for me, the unthinkable happened. I stopped reading Clancy’s novels. I have tried to get through Rainbow Six about five times. But I just can’t. I recently read Red Rabbit, the prequel Clancy wrote about Jack Ryan’s early CIA days. But it was pretty bad and - shockingly - boring. How many times do we need to be reminded that Ryan’s “just an analyst” or “a tough former Marine?” How many characters needed to reference the fact that Ryan had broken his back in a helicopter accident and still completed his training?

There is a problem when you create a protaganist in a long-term series. You either have to forever freeze him/her in time (James Bond) or you have to address the fact that time moves on. Jack Ryan was just an analyst in the early books. But he was promoted, like most qualified people would be. Supervisors died or retired or were forced out. He moved up to Deputy Director of Intelligence, Director of Intelligence, Director of the NSA, Vice President, and then President of the USA. The President doesn’t go on ops. So what do you do? You start to build the books around other characters that had been introduced — James Clark (a black bag specialist), Ding Chavez (former Marine), even Jack Ryan Jr. Or you have to keep dipping into the prequel pool. That leads to the continuity issue - too many time fishing in that pond can start to goof up events that happened in earlier books.

Wait, I think we’re supposed to be talking about the movie. OH yeah. The Jack Ryan films have been hit and miss. Hunt for Red October was stellar. Alec Baldwin was perfect as Ryan. He was how I pictured the character as I read. Actually, he still is the way I picture him. When Harrison Ford took over, the films slipped. Ford is supposed to be playing “just an analyst?” He’s as old as the President in the films. That’s not admirable, it is sad. Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger were entertaining films. But things really went off the rails with the next reboot, The Sum of All Fears. There already was a built in problem - the book sucked. It was bloated and stupid. A completely new cast stepped in, with Ben Affleck playing a younger Jack Ryan. I hated the movie. So did most people. It seemed like Hollywood was content moving on from Jack Ryan. Tom Clancy’s other works - like Rainbow Six - had turned into a video game cash cow. Plus the spy thriller had moved on from the techno-thriller to the Jason Bourne spy movies. Technology moved too fast to impress people in a movie. It was now about being brainy and brawny.

I was a bit surprised when I saw that Hollywood was dipping back into the Tom Clancy reservoir. Twelve years had passed since The Sum of All Fears! Was there really that big of a crowd beating down the doors for a Clancy movie?  Instead of taking a standing book, though, they just co-opted the Jack Ryan character and wrote an original story. There were some impressive people attached. Kevin Costner, Keira Knightley, Chris Pine, Kenneth Branagh. And Branagh was directing. I have been a big Branagh fan since he burst on the scene in Henry V. As a director, I thought he did a fantastic job on Thor. I am not completely sold on Chris Pine as a movie star. He is good in some stuff (Unstoppable, Star Trek), but he also can be very one note (This Means War). The whole concept sounded interesting. My wife and I planned on going to see it, but having three kids means that all movie plans are tenuous at best. So that meant the movie was a perfect option for a Redbox viewing.

Admittedly, I was interrupted several times during my movie-going experience.  My daughter for some reason kept coming downstairs - usually during a particularly violent scene that sent me scrambling for the pause button.  I flipped over to watch the end of the San Antonio Spurs/Miami Heat scrimmage.  And one of our dogs kept climbing on me.  However, I still feel I got a pretty good feel for the movie.

We are in major reboot, prequel territory.  Jack Ryan (Chris Pine) is first seen as a student in England during the 9/11 attacks.  He dropped out of school and enlisted in the Marines.  During his tour, his helicopter was shot down, breaking his back. (This apparently is the equivalent to Bruce Wayne's parents being killed in the Batman series.  You can mess around with a lot of things in that series, but not Bruce's parents getting whacked.  Or Jack Ryan breaking his back.)  During rehab he meets two important people - his future wife, Cathy Mueller (Keira Knightley), and his CIA recruiter, Something Idontcare (Kevin Costner).  Cathy is finishing up her medical school training and has just a few hours in her personal training rotation left before she is off to become a brilliant eye surgeon.  Costner has Ryan go back to school to finish his doctorate in economics to better establish his cover on Wall Street.  When we next see everyone, Ryan is an analyst examining mysterious accounts between Russian and American companies; Cathy is a ophthalmology resident; and Costner is not around.  We meet Kenneth Branagh's Russian bad guy as he is told by some mysterious government type played by Mikhail Baryshnikov that he is cleared to start whatever sneaky pete thing he is up to.  So, here is where I start to have my recap overrun by my gripes.

1. Having been through the med school process with my wife, I don't buy the whole timeline with Jack's wife.  A PT rotation in fourth year?  Doubtful.  Scampering off to an Ophtho residency?  NOT how it works, pal.  Ophtho residents have to complete a year of internal medicine residency first.  In addition, the match process for Ophtho is EXTREMELY difficult.  We have a great friend from med school who went through that gauntlet and it was horrific.  From other Clancy books, we know Cathy is beyond brilliant as a surgeon.  But the whole thing just plays into a very generic "doctor making" timeline.
2. Movie Marketing can destroy a movie.  I remember when Jim Carrey's movie The Cable Guy came out.  Everyone was expecting another slapstick, crazy Carrey-esque movie.  What they got was a dark comedy.  Very dark.  It was funny, but in a twisted and disturbing way.  The movie bombed.  Similarly, the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Last Action Hero was marketed as another muscle-bound Arnie flick.  But it was actually a vicious satire of the entire action genre.  Go watch it sometime.  It is actually very good, if you understand WHAT it is.  Jack Ryan fell into the marketing trap.  Everything played up the paranoia angle.  Who do you trust?  Can he trust Kevin Costner's recruiter CIA man?  Can he trust his own wife?!?  Take a gander at that picture I included.  What's the tagline?  "Trust no one!" This is serious spy stuff, mister.  Espionage! Paranoia! Betrayal!  Trust no one.  Hey, guess how many double crosses there were in the movie?  NONE! Guess how many times I was worried there was going to be a double cross?  NONE!  I used to get more tense in an episode of Burn Notice or Chuck.  Don't make it seem like an espionage thriller when it isn't.
3. You have Kenneth Branagh in this movie.  He is the current generation's best Shakespearean actor.  That means he is, by nature, a scenery chewer.  That is his job.  Now, I'm not saying I wanted him doing a Russian version of his Loveless character from Wild Wild West.  But, you're playing a Russian villain!  One of his biggest character traits was that he was quiet.  What?!? The ridiculous thing is that Branagh directed the movie, so he is the one to blame for this.  He doesn't even know how to utilize himself?  Maybe that was why Knightley and Costner could have just been played by any other actors without much of a glitch  Actually, getting right down to it, there were quite a few good actors whose skills were poorly tapped.  
4. I still am not entirely clear what was going on in the movie.  There was some kind of plot where this Russian guy would bring down the US dollar.  He had these moves that were supposed to coincide with a terrorist attack or something.  But I really don't know what any of it had to do with anything.  It was a poorly constructed plan, to say the very least.  
5. Jack Ryan is supposed to just be an analyst.  But he also apparently had intensive hand-to-hand combat training where he can fight off a MUCH larger enemy in a tight space (bathroom) and drown him in three inches of water.  Mmmm hmmm.  He also can stare at screens in a room and unravel an entire intricate hidden Russian economic terrorist plot, but can't remember the correct protocol words for an extraction.  Ok.  And he can't remember to throw away an incriminating movie ticket stub....
6. What the heck is a Shadow Recruit anyway?  

I think that this movie was an effort to bring the Jack Ryan character into the Jason Bourne world.  But it didn't work.  I don't know if it was that Chris Pine is no Matt Damon, that the action scenes were harried but ineffective, or that the intrigue just wasn't there.  I was baffled at how little these big movie stars had to do.  I remember watching Kevin Costner in No Way Out and being glued to my screen.  There were so many twists and turns and secrets.  THAT is a spy movie.  This was just a poor attempt to capitalize on a once great character's name.  So, unless Paramount is planning on finally making the Without Remorse movie that should have been made, my advice is to leave Tom Clancy's library alone.

40

Today I turn 40. 

I have been pretty vocal with people that this is not a happy occasion. I have no idea why, but I have a mental glitch that makes 40 seems very old. I have said that it feels like I am heading down the back side of the mountain of life. You can't even pretend to be in touch and cool when you are 40.  It has always been that way in my mind. 40 equals old. 

It has been worse for me lately. I really was down about turning 40. Sure, there are all of the usually qualifiers. "It's better than the alternative." "I've got my health, so that's great." And of course my older friends have chirped in with the, "You are young compared to me so shut up." I didn't say they were kind friends. 

I think part of my problem is that there are certain milestones that naturally lead to reflection. New Year's Day. Class reunions. Birthdays and anniversaries that end in 5 or 0. Frankly, I haven't liked what this reflection has shown. I am 40. What have I done? I don't have a career to speak of. I stay home with my kids. I haven't built anything - either physically or economically. It can be kind of disheartening. So 40 hasn't been much of a super happy fun thought. 

This past week the whole family was off. The kids had spring break, Heather was on vacation, and I was ... Um ... the usual. We decided to go to Orlando for the break. We had not been back since we moved to South Carolina in June. The original plan was to have a big 40th birthday bash one night. But living seven hours away makes it difficult to handle logistics. So instead we decided to see as many people as we could and do a bunch of stuff we had missed since we moved. 

So we went to a bunch of restaurants we used to frequent. We hit 4 Rivers Smokehouse and Flippers Pizza and Tijuana Flats. We went to Summit Church for Palm Sunday. We spent a day at Downtown Disney. We even got to try The Coop - the new restaurant by the 4 Rivers crew. All of that was awesome to experience. 

But what really made the week memorable was the time we got to spend with our friends. We didn't get to see everyone we wanted to see, but we did get to spend quality time with a bunch of people. By the time we wrapped up our roster of visits on Friday night, something had begun to dawn on me. I wake up as a very blessed 40 year old man. 

I like to poke fun at how often people use #blessed on their twitter and Facebook posts. But it really is the truest word I feel right now. I am blessed beyond belief. 

- I have a brilliant, beautiful, amazing wife who loves and supports me. She is pursuing her dream, and providing financially for our family through that. She is an example and model for her fellow residents - as well as medical students following in her path. She pushes me to be better and trusts me. 

- I have three incredible, gorgeous children. They are funny and talented and wonderful. I have the unbelievable honor of not only being their dad, but also spending every day with them. Yes, there are days where that honor feels more like a cruel punishment. And there are days I wish there were still bands of wandering gypsies I could sell them to. But, all in all, I cannot believe how lucky I am to have the time and relationship I have with them. 

- I have family who loves me beyond words. That is not limited to the family I was born with. It also includes my parents in-law, brothers and sisters in-law, cousins, uncles and aunts. As I grew into an adult, I was sad about how little I knew my extended family. But now I have such an abundance of extended family that it is impossible to keep up with all of them. My children have cousins who adore them and can't wait to see them - beautiful kids that will be lifelong friends. It is so wonderful. 

- I have friends, such sweet and faithful friends, that have been a part of my life for decades. It really struck me this week that I have multiple friendships of the intensity that some people will never find in their lives. These are people I would not hesitate to leave my children with. And they would trust me with their kids. I know that if something catastrophic happened and I called these people, they would be in a car driving to assist before I hung up. (Of course they would have to wade through about three levels of family who also responded.) They have kids that love my kids like brothers and sisters. As a dad, I cannot adequately express how much these kids and parents mean to me. 

- Most importantly I have a God who loves me to such a ridiculous, illogical, unfathomable level that he sent his Son to rescue me from a life of hopelessness, emptiness, and frustration. He loved me no matter how unlovely, hateful, irresponsible, lazy, and unfaithful I was. I find it quite appropriate that my 40th birthday falls on Easter this year. I get to celebrate my special day on the most special day. I don't have to fear getting older because of what happened on Easter. I don't ever have to feel alone or unloved because of Easter. And I can realize just how silly it is to be down about turning 40 because of Easter. 

So happy birthday to me. I truly believe I am the most blessed man around. Thank you all for the gift you have given me by being a part of my life. 

A Cry in the Night

We are all there from time to time. We may try to deny that fact. It may be because we see it as a weakness or a lack of faith. Maybe we believe we need more vitamins or sunlight or a vacation. So we do our best to ignore it. We stuff it down deep and keep on playing a role that we think the world wants us to play. We go into our jobs and nod at our coworkers. At church we act super holy and smile, or super penitent and solemn.  Modern social media presents us with another opportunity to put on an act.  We either hide our true feelings beneath a flurry of meaningless status updates and Buzzfeed links or we flood our friends with a neverending deluge of griping and moaning.  

I'm referring to the blues, depression, feeling down.  It seems that there are cycles that the average person goes through, happiness and sadness.  But this feeling I'm talking about is more than that.  It is that soul-crushing emptiness and despair that doesn't get fixed with chocolate or a collection of cute animal pictures.  I would wager everyone knows what that feels like.  You can be super religious or not even believe in God.  There are times when something seems to go wrong in our brains and we just take up residence in the darker places.  

We have seen this throughout history.  The prophet Elijah was so depressed at one point (when most people thought he should have been the happiest) that he wanted to die.  Israel's king Saul would go into deep funks.  The Apostle Paul certainly seemed to battle gloominess.  Abraham Lincoln supposedly suffered from two major depressive breakdowns.  In short, it isn't uncommon.  In Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan had his characters traverse the Slough of Despond (Despair).  It was pictured as a virtually impassible dark, wet, marshy area.  What a wonderful picture of despair! (And another argument for why books rock.)  You literally get bogged down and can't break loose.

To me, that bog has a vortex at the bottom that sucks me further into the darkness.  It becomes harder to escape and easier to believe the voices that echo in the gloom.  Oh yes, the voices.  How could I forget those?  They are the ones that we are able to block out most of the time with television and music and iPhone apps.  But they come out with a vengeance in the dark.  They are hateful and destructive.  They remind us of our failures and minimize our successes.  They rip and shred and bruise.  It seems so wrong that something so hateful could exist in our own heads.  (Hateful self-talk should be the biggest argument against the theory that humankind does anything possible to survive.)  These accusing tones live deep in the bog and feed on darkness.  And they become louder and louder.

To anyone who can honestly say that they have never battled depression, first say a silent prayer of thanks.  You are a fortunate soul.  Next, know that there things you can do to help those who are struggling.  Don't judge them.  It isn't as if they went looking for this.  Second, don't try to give them advice on how to shake it.  Trust me, they have thought of everything you could offer.  They already are beating themselves up for struggling.  They already are wondering why thinking happy thoughts, listening to uplifting music, and praying isn't curing the problem.  They already are convinced they are doing something horribly wrong.  So your suggestions, no matter how well intentioned they are, will come across as judgment.  Third, try to understand that this is not just being in a bad mood or being down.  It is something that the person cannot shake, no matter how hard they try.

Picture it this way.  Imagine you fall into a deep well.  It is dark and gloomy inside - darker than you can believe.  The further you slip down into the well, the darker it gets.  How can the darkness get darker?  Yet it does.  It is completely black.  The darkness actually feels like it has weight, crushing you.  The voices get louder and the way out seems further and further away.  Hardly a pretty picture.  How can one climb out when they cannot see where they are going?  In that much darkness, climbing out and climbing deeper seem the same.

The worst part about depression, despair, the blues is the lack of hope.  Hope is such an unbelievably powerful concept.  I don't think we actually think about just how strong hope is.  One of the themes of The Hunger Games trilogy is the value of hope.  There are some great discussions with President Snow (the evil despot) about hope in regards to Katniss Everdeen (the reluctant hero).  He talks at first about how hope is valuable, even to a dastardly villain.  "Hope is the only thing stronger than fear."  He recognizes that his subjugated people need hope or they will lose the will to live.  The threat of death would be meaningless to a person who has no life worth living.  "A spark is fine, as long as it is contained."  It is almost how adding a little salt to a chocolate dish enhances the flavor.  A little hope makes the fear more real.  However, he recognizes that the hope he offered is getting out of control by the second book/film.  Instead of being a spark, she has become a beacon.  "Fear does not work as long as there is hope."

This is where I believe our role lies when helping a person in these sloughs.  We are to offer them hope.  Going back to that dark well I was describing earlier.  Imagine if you were to fire a flaming Hawkeye-style arrow into the wall of that pit.  What happens?  Does it provide a way out?  Nope.  Does it fix the problem?  Not at all.  Does it remove all the darkness?  Negatory, good buddy.  But it offers light.  It offers hope.  It points the way up and out.  It gives a little brightness to their world.  The truth it, you never know just how important your words can be to someone.  You don't know what they are going through, what they are struggling with.  It could be that your words are just what they needed to hear.

The other day, I was in the middle of one of these painful patches.  I struggle from time to time with depression.  I am a melancholy personality type, so I drift in that direction anyway.  But I have been battling for a while.  For almost two years, I have been on an anti-depression/anti-anxiety pill.  It has made a world of difference.  But there are still breakthrough moments that defy even the best chemistry can offer.  Last Friday, I went on a field trip with Gabe's class to the local park.  We hiked through the woods and then did a scavenger hunt.  That was followed up by the Daddy/Daughter Dance the same night, and then coaching Gabe's soccer team on Saturday morning.  To a normal person, this would be a reasonable amount of activity.  But, for a person suffering with rheumatoid arthritis, it was the definition of Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point theory.  I had been battling with allergies and minor illnesses for a couple of weeks.  The Friday/Saturday combo pushed me over the edge into a full-fledged RA flareup.  RA is a weird thing.  It isn't strictly swollen joints.  It is your immune system trying to destroy your joints.  It does crazy awful things to your body.  Medication for it actually destroys your immune system to stop this destruction.  This leaves you vulnerable to other things - like infections, illnesses, etc.  Mix all of that up, and I was down for the count.  I was exhausted.  I was down.  Sunday, I slept in until 11:30am - over 12 hours.  To anyone who knows me, this is unheard of.  Monday, I woke up, dropped the kids off at school, came home and went back to bed until almost noon.  Yesterday the same thing happened.

Fatigue, pain, illness, flare-up.  I was in a bad state.  And last week I started getting very dark in my mind.  I was doing all the right things to control it.  I was fighting my hardest.  I wasn't letting thoughts take root.  I was fighting the voices.  But it felt like I was getting pulled under the waves and was helpless to escape.  Finally on Monday night, I was laying in bed and trying to sleep with the voices pounding in my head.  Heather was laying there, falling asleep.  I spoke up and told her just how dark things were getting.  I had told her about the struggle of the past week and a half, then about the pain I was wrestling.  She had been a very supportive wife and friend - doing all the things she should do in this situation.  But in that moment, I was crying (literally) for a rescue.  I told her how the voices were continually telling me I was worthless and pointless.  I was explaining how when I am at my best, I am out there with people and teaching and investing in young people.  The opportunities here are limited for that.  My latest Kaplan class had just ended (a correlation I had not recognized until just that moment).  So I was feeling alone and isolated and worthless.  That sends me into my default mode of pulling further and further away into my dark hole.

After listening to these things, she responded.  "David, you are the glue that holds this family together.  Without you, I don't even know how we would function.  The only reason I am able to do what I do is because I never worry about things getting taken care of because I know you are doing them.  Your kids love you to pieces.  I love you.  You are anything but useless."  It was as if she had selected the multi-flaming-arrow move from Hawkeye and launched them all into the wall of my pit.  The darkness exploded with light.  Those words were so incredible and important to hear.  If you have read this blog for a length of time, you know that I have shared my efforts to become a better man, a more reliable husband, a more tender and loving father.  To have my wife say those things to me in my deepest moment of need?  They demonstrated just how far I had come.  They didn't erase the last ten days.  They didn't fix everything.  But they offered me light and love, and so importantly hope.

The last couple of days, I have grabbed onto those words and used them to gain footholds out of my well.  I have used them as weapons to fight off the accusing tones in my head.  And I find myself slowly emerging from the darkness.  More and more, I am realizing just how important we are to each other.  The words we say, the actions we take.  We don't have to be doctors to heal.  Our pastor back in Orlando used to say, "We were not meant to live this life alone."  I am fully convinced that those words are true.  (Sadly, he forgot those words - something that still breaks my heart every time I think of him.)  We were not meant to live alone.  The seminal television show Lost had as its mantra, "Live together; die alone." (Although, some of the most heartbreaking deaths occurred when they were together.)  We never know when a person near us is on the verge of losing it.  We never know how our words may be just what someone needs to hear - or what someone WILL need to hear later.  There are things that people have said to me in my past that still serve as flaming arrows and anchors for me.  It could be Charles Wise saying, "You're a good man, David.  You're a good man." Or it could be Cary Smith tenderly commenting, "You are not an angry man.  I have seen angry men.  You are not angry.  You are a man who lashes out when he feels out of control.  But you are definitely not an angry man."  (That was the first time anyone had said that to me - countering an assessment that had been all too frequent in my life.)  Those words will last my life.  The ones my wife said the other day will go into that treasure chest.  They are words of life and hope.

The same time that I was dealing with all of this, a friend of mine, Adel, from my Apple days posted on his Facebook a story about his life.  He was in a dark place too and something that could be seen as completely random and minor helped to shine new light on his situation.  It really drove home the reminder that we need to be there for each other.  I appreciated his transparency.  And, truthfully, it is what led me to write this.  To anyone striving to be a writer, you know how hard it can be to write.  The negative self-talk rings loud when a writer sits down at his computer, squelching many a good effort.  So imagine writing about depression.  It is a minor miracle that this post ever got finished, and it is a testimony to how important I think it is.  I have often joked that I only hope my life can serve as a warning sign to others.  I truthfully do hope that my failures and weaknesses can help others escape or avoid those.  (Shoot, I would guess ninety percent of the arguments I have with Josiah is trying to keep him from repeating my mistakes and his insistence that he won't, as he does.)  Today, I doubly hope this is true.

For those of you struggling, let me offer you hope.  You are not alone.  You have great worth and value.  There are people all around you that love you and think the world of you.  For those of you not struggling, love those around you.  Don't give up an opportunity to speak words of encouragement to those people you love.  You may think they will tire of hearing you love them, respect them, need them.  But your words may be salvation to them.  And to all of us, take this as a challenge to embrace the chance to change someone's life.  It is so easy to slip into sarcasm and negativity and criticism.  We see that all the time on Facebook and Twitter and the Interwebs.  For once, put that aside and be genuine and truthful and love on someone around you.  Tell them how important they are.  Tell them how talented and beautiful they are.  Give them hope.  Richard DeVos owns a really crappy basketball team, in the Orlando Magic.  But he once said, "Few things in the world are more powerful than a positive push. A smile. A world of optimism and hope. A 'you can do it' when things are tough."  Those are true words.  Go spread some light in the dark.