By now, many if not most of you have already been made aware of – if not have already read – the extensive February 16th article from Esquire entitled Roger Ebert: The Essential Man. A reference perhaps to Leonard Cohen’s “I’m Your Man,” the song that Ebert purportedly played repeatedly while in his hospital room after one of the many cancer surgeries that he’s had to endure since his first one in 2002, the article is a moving and bittersweet account of a man whose contribution to the world of film is immeasurable.

I first became aware of Roger Ebert in the late ‘70s, when he and Gene Siskel, his partner for over 20 years went into national syndication with their Sneak Previews show on PBS.

For me, their show was essential viewing, intelligent discussion about film, and not just the mainstream movies of the day, but also the obscure underground art-house films that could only be viewed in some of the larger cities across America. I was going to Berkeley high at the time, was a terribly shy teen, and spent a lot of my free time going to movies – usually by myself. We had the UC Theater, one of the early Landmark Theater screens, and they played a different double feature pretty much every night. I could be found there three or four nights (or days if on the weekend) during any given week. Each week however, I would always try to make sure that I was somewhere with a TV nearby when Sneak Previews aired. As much as was possible I would never miss a show.

Ebert’s commentary – his words – about film were an essential part of my filmic diet, a veritable classroom doled out in weekly portions, something to be relished. Regardless if I agreed or disagreed with either of the critics, their discourse would invariably spark the critic within me. Their weekly discussions about various films and their relative merit helped to make me a more critical thinker, and ultimately a more astute and critical viewer of film. Keep in mind this is a guy who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work as a film critic, back in 1975, years before he was on TV!

In 1981, I moved to Seattle. The following year Siskel and Ebert moved to network television, and extended their reach to mainstream audiences. I continued to watch Siskel and Ebert review and debate movies until Siskel’s death in 1999, and continued to tune in to Ebert and his new partner Richard Roper who was his co-host until 2006. My love for film never subsided, and throughout, Ebert was a constant voice, one that I did not always agree with, but one that would invariably give me some new perspective to consider. I thank him for that.

Now his battle with cancer has taken his ability to speak. His entire lower jaw has been removed: The bone that was once there is gone. He cannot eat or drink; he has no voice, no spoken voice anyway. As a writer however, he is more prolific than ever, and since 2008 (when in the midst of a particularly bad fight with cancer) Ebert has been chronicling his experiences and thoughts in a blog that has – as of the writing of the Esquire article – surpassed half a million words!

In the article, Ebert writes: “When I am writing, my problems become invisible and I am the same person I always was.” I read this, and I read it again. I am stunned. He is 67 years old. He has devoted his life to the things he’s loved the most, has honed his craft and continued to sharpen his creative self, and when dealt with a blow that would take the juice out of pretty much anybody I can think of, he finds the sweet nugget and savors the little thing that makes it special. His cancer is in a state of remission, and hopefully it will never return. I cannot imagine what it would be like to go through the ordeal that Roger Ebert has had to endure, but through it all it appears that he has managed to keep his focus, and somehow he has managed to find joy in the things that make his life rich.

This is not a lesson on film, but it is most certainly a powerful lesson in life.  As trite as it may sound, I think we can all do better to learn to let the petty shit go so that we can more fully appreciate the small things that make our lives rich. I will certainly do my best find inspiration in the sweet nuggets.

Read Ebert’s Response to the Esquire Article

See Ebert’s 323 (and counting) Greatest Movies of all Time (alphabetical)

This is a story that will likely ruffle some feathers, and anger more than a few old friends. That is my no means the intent, but it’s about Skin Yard’s old singer, Ben McMillan who very sadly died a couple of years back due to complications from diabetes. The one piece that is rarely mentioned however, is that his diabetes was alcohol induced, something I had never heard about until I spoke with one of Ben’s doctors during the period when he was in a coma several years before.

I know that it is politically correct to not speak ill of the dead, and while I do not even consider the following story to be “speaking ill,” I know that  it’s not uncommon that people tend to remember those who have passed in a selective light. Often, after our friends have left us, friends who – like the rest of us – had their good and bad qualities, suddenly seem to only be remembered for their positive attributes. I suppose it’s human nature, but let’s be honest: we all have our faults, and we all have our damage to varying degrees, and I for one hope to be remembered for both my positive and negative attributes when I finally leave this world. I’ll be the first to recognize my weaknesses and shortcomings. It’s part of who I am. It was also part of who Ben was, and was certainly part of Ben’s magnanimous charm. Disclaimer aside, please read on.

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I think I can say in all fairness that Ben was an alcoholic. At the very beginning of every tour that we ever did, his first order of business would be to have us stop at a store to buy at minimum, a half case of beer. It didn’t matter whether it was day or night, whether we’d even hit the freeway out of Seattle yet, we’d be stopping at a 7-11 or a Safeway so he could get his road fuel, and usually before we were even out of the parking lot, he would have cracked his first beer. Which led to the next one and so forth…within 4-5 hours he would have finished all 12 bottles, which would have been fine, however usually within the first 45 minutes of the trip, Ben would beg for us to stop because he had to piss, which also meant that we’d have to stop every half an hour just so he could empty his bladder. This was – in my mind – unacceptable . We all fussed about how it was not  necessary that he drink beer the entirety of the tour, and that it was not realistic to stop on average every half hour for the next 45 days on the road, particularly on those days when we had a 10 hour drive in front of us. Ben however, was not willing to make that particular compromise, and we were not willing to accommodate his desire to have us stop every damned rest stop and gas station along the freeway just so he could relieve himself. So we came up with a “solution.” Ben would be responsible when we first stopped for his half rack of beer to also grab an empty Big Gulp cup with a top, and that would become the receptacle for his frequent need to empty his bladder. My preference – being the inflexible taskmaster that I was then – was still that he just not drink in the van, but the rest of the troops searching for the path of least resistance, said “ok.” Ben would slowly fill his portable 40 ounce plastic cup doing his best as we were blasting down the freeway to get it all in the cup. A lid was essential to the whole operation. The piss cup was stored along the floor in the recessed area next to the sliding side door, and every 2 or 3 hours, when we had to stop for gas and snacks, we’d spill out of the van and Ben would take care of emptying the contents of the cup. Some of the time however, the cup would be completely full, and we’d be nowhere near a stop, so Ben would unroll the passenger window and toss the cup to the side of the road, and he’d grab a fresh cup at our next refill.

The heater in the van had stopped working during one of the colder tours that we embarked on. It was November and we were at the tail end of our trip. Our last show had just finished in Chicago, and it was bitter cold outside – somewhere in the high 20s – low 30s. The show was not one of the highlights of the tour. It was reasonably attended, but we were tired, and ready to get home. After getting paid, Ben managed to secure a full case of beer. He was elated. Ben also managed to score a quarter gram of crystal, which was essential as we were going to attempt a straight shot drive – 42 hours more or less non-stop from Chicago back to Seattle, with all of us but Ben trading driving shifts. The crystal was essential, because we needed to be chemically stimulated for this particular leg of the trip. Two needed to be awake, the driver – which was going to be me through the night – and the other – Ben – to keep the driver engaged. Everybody got bundled up wrapped from chin to toe in our sleeping bags trying so stay awake in a van with no heater boring along the dark freeway in the freezing night. It was hellish. I’m driving, and Ben is in the passenger seat, equally mummified with one of his arms out, beer in hand and a half full cup of piss on the floor next to him.

About an hour away from Chicago, Ben had managed to fill his cup. We were all still awake and barely staying warm as we careened west along the freeway as fast as our poor van was able to go. We had almost two days of driving ahead, and we would do our best to make tracks as best as the van would take us. Ben unrolled the window to toss the cup, and the biting ice-wind rushed into the cab of the van. The rest of us were all yelling for him to hurry up and toss the cup fer fuckssake. I slowed down a bit to ease the force of the air rushing in. Ben half unraveled himself from his sleeping bag and tossed the cup out the window.

The events of the next few seconds all occurred in ultra slow motion.

The cup got caught in the air and did two quick 360 degree spins before the lid from the cup became unhinged and the entire contents of the Big Gulp came rushing back through the open window covering Ben from the top of his head down to his waist which was mostly sleeping bag now soaked in his own urine. I saw the splash coming in and actually swerved the van as if to avoid an animal in the road. I never knew if it made any real difference, but the leading edge of the wave missed me by literally an inch or two. I was spared, as was everyone else in the van, now all howling hysterically, completely aware of what had just occurred. Ben was sitting there in his seat, hair completely dripping onto his coat and further drenching his sleeping bag, which he had little choice but to keep on because it was so incredibly cold. It reminded me of that classic National Geographic photo of that monkey in the hot spring, his wet head half frozen and the look on his face pissed off and indignant. That was Ben. Not just covered and soaking in his own piss, but mortified and frozen as the temperature crept in to his hair and his clothes and into his damp stinky sleeping bag. The howling laughter went on for minutes. In retrospect this was perhaps the grossest story in our arsenal of tour stories, but at that particular moment, it was the definitive “told-you-so,” the ultimate cosmic payback.

The worst part though, was that we was still had another 41 hours to go.

“Hello World” is what you are supposed to have your first program print out in pretty much every introductory (computer) programming class. Not particularly exciting, but I suppose you’ve got to start somewhere, and “Hello World” is apparently it…so this being my first post to this – my new website/blog –will (unimaginatively) be my first announcement to the world as well.

Prior to this incarnation, I had a previous websites living at this domain for quite a number of years, but it was static and unchanging, and frankly very “1995.” Considering that my work has – now for many years – been in web and interactive, it only seemed appropriate to update my personal website to one that was (at least marginally) reflective of the “new” web (as in 2.0), one that is dynamic and interactive. This is what invariably happens: you do a lot of great work for other people, that you can never seem to find the time to get up-to-speed on a build of your own. It’s like going to a website of a graphic designer and finding a site that is very poorly designed – not a good representation of that persons work and ability, and certainly not somebody you’d want to hire.

So, welcome to my new face lift. I work full-time, and already I’m finding that I will have to push myself to find the time to write new posts, but it’s important that I do, both in terms of maintaining a creative discipline in my life, but also in terms of the work that I do working with Web, marketing, social media and creative uses of new media on the Web and elsewhere.

This is a good transition, one of many over the last year, but I’ll save that for another post.