Eulogy for a Ghostbuster

Harold Ramis was an actor, director, writer, and of course a fellow human being, but some people may wonder why I would chose to memorialize a man I never met. After all he was just another Hollywood guy, right? Why should I be so touched by the lose of another actor? I didn't even bat an eyelash when Philip Seymour Hoffman died. I never spent an entire blog post going on about Nelson Mandela, not that he didn't deserve it, but Ramis was something special in my life. He wrote such classics as Caddyshack, Stripes, National Lampoon's Vacation, and the true masterpiece: Groundhog's Day, but what he will always be remembered for (in my mind) is his work on Ghostbusters, both as a writer and actor. That movie influenced me, which is a realization that I don't think I even thought about until I read the news of his death.

Ghostbusters was a hallmark in my mind, and it went beyond the Saturday morning cartoon, the Ecto Cooler, the action figures (I still have the ghostbusters' firehouse stored in my parent's attic,) to something deeper. Ghostbusters is the first movie I ever saw in a movie theater, (admittedly it was probably Ghostbusters II, because I wasn't even one year old by the time the first movie came out,) but going to that theater with my parents remains one of my earliest memories as a child. It was literally, the earliest nerdy thing I ever did. It was also pretty cool that the first movie my parents brought their young child to see was rated PG, (but for the record I was very well behaved and I promise I was not one of those children.) The sexual innuendo went over my head at the time, but that was fine. It gave me something to enjoy later, as an adult... I'm digressing.

To my child's mind the movie was perfection. It was funny, filled with action, and even a bit scary, but it was the good kind of the scary. It was the kind of scary where you knew everything would be okay, because as bad as the ghosts were, there were people who existed to combat them and keep you safe. That's a good feeling to have as a little kid. When I was scared at night in my room I used to look at my plastic proton pack, and it helped made me feel braver. If there were evil things that existed out there then I was sure that there were also good people who existed to fight them, (and not that I fully realized or articulated this at the time, but) it was a fact made even better because the Ghostbusters weren't highly trained experts, they were blue-collared guys, like me, and like my parents.

Memorial outside of Hook & Ladder 8 in Lower Manhattan,
the firehouse used as the Ghostbusters' headquarters. The
fire station also hung a Ghostbusters sign  on the exterior,
in honor of the passing of Harold Ramis.

I think that comes down the the crux of my love of Ghostbusters. That movie holds a special place in my heart, not just because it was fun and funny, but because it was a moment of bonding for me and my parents. The Ghostbusters represented the everyman who could stop all those terrifying things that go bump in the night. They weren't perfect, but that didn't matter. They were heroes who kept me safe, like my parents. My mom and dad aren't superheroes like Batman, ninjas like the Mutant Turtles, or even highly trained soldiers like the members of GI Joe, (all were heroes of my childhood.) They were just regular people who did the best they could given their circumstances, and when they told me everything was going to be okay, or that there were no monsters in my closet, I believed them. The world seemed better because they were there to protect me, and knowing that made me feel braver. Harold Ramis gave me that precious memory, that long lost day of parental bonding. Maybe that is why, when I read the news of his death, I was struck by it.

Yes it is true, that he and I never formally made the acquaintance of one another, but I am still grieved by his passing, (69 was too young, though comedically appropriate.) And, I don't think my situation is unique, as evidenced by the out pouring on Facebook. So that is why I choose to eulogize this legend of comedy. He may not have done the type of things that Nelson Mandela did, but you don't always need to be a freedom fighter to touch people's lives. Harold Ramis touched my life. Egon Spengler was a part of my childhood, a part of my relationship with my parents, a part of how I defined myself, (the heroic nerd,) and for that I will never be able to find the words to say thank you.

Ten Word We Need in English

I have had many careers in my time, but first and foremost the English language has always been my craft. I am a wordsmith, a grammatist, and a conjugate-keeper, if you will. I have both studied and taught the use of my native tongue, so if there is anyone qualified in any sort of way to offer suggestions for improving, I can't think of anyone better, (Well maybe Chaucer, but he's been a bit unavailable since his death in 1400 A.D.) So without further adieu (my favorite English word,) I give you my suggestions for new English words:

Gigil - Filipino

This word describes the urge you have to touch, pinch, or basically fondle anything that is cute and cuddly. I'm talking rabbits, puppies, kittens, etc. The only drawback is that it sounds too much like giggle or jiggle, (which is somewhat appropriate) so it would have to be pronounced like Ji-jil.

EXAMPLE: I have a gigil for that puppy.

Lagom - Swedish

There is no exact equivalent of this in English. It's when something is not too much of one thing or not too much of another. Something that sits in that sweet spot, not too sour or too sweet. It's like Goldilocks' porridge, just right. English speakers would probably pronounce it la-gom.

EXAMPLE: That movie was lagom, it had just enough action and just enough plot.

Layogenic - Ghanian

The word sounds more like an SAT word than it really is. It means a person who is attractive from far away, but ugly up close. (Good from far, but far from good.) What I really like about this word is that it makes a certain amount of sense, English-wise. It sounds like photogenic but ironically kind of means the opposite.

EXAMPLE: Here comes, Jenny. Try to keep a hundred feet back from that layogenic woman or you'll regret it.

Tartle - Scots

This one is just fun to say. It is meant to represent that moment of panicked hesitation when you try to introduce someone to someone else, but you have completely forgotten their name. It's meant to be onomatopoeic, but in English I think we could do a lot more with it, such as using it as a verb and a noun.

EXAMPLE 1: John forgot Sally's name, and here comes the moment of tartle.

EXAMPLE 2: Crap, I forgot Sally's name and I completely tartled that introduction.

Backpfeifengesicht - German

This mouthful of a word basically means a person's face that's worthy of being punched. (Yeah, you got to love the Germans.) However, I can't even begin to pronounce it and though I love the concept we are going to need to cut it down for practical usage. I propose we shorten it to backfef. Its simple, short, and even a bit harsh on the tongue, perfect for doing what the German language does best, express anger at another human being.

EXAMPLE: David is such a backfef. I'd love to knock out his perfect teeth.

Nunchi - Korean

A nunchi is someone who is very aware of their social surroundings. They are keenly aware of what the right and wrong things are to say in a given social context. They pick up on social clues and use them to their advantage, thus minimizing the risk of becoming a backfef. It is both a person and a social instinct.

EXAMPLE: Robert showed he was a real nunchi by having nunchi and not making that sexist joke in front of Karen.

Age-otori - Japanese

This hyphenated word of wonder has quite a simple meaning. You know that feeling when you go and get a haircut and afterwards you look in the mirror and you look worse than your did before you got your haircut? Well that is Age-otori, but for English we will need to bastardize it, (as we so often do.) So let's change it to ageo (pronounced: ag-eo).

EXAMPLE: Damn, that barber really gave you an ageo. You should get your money back.

Espirit d'escalier - French

This complicated French word describes the moment when you think of the perfect comeback for someone who has insulted you, only its like two hours later and no one cares anymore. This one will definitely have to be shortened as most English speakers (especially Americans,) can barely say croissant without hacking up a lung. So let's go with escalier, since it sort-of means bottom or after.

EXAMPLE: That's good, but it's been like ten minutes. Aren't you a little escalier with that insult?

Culaccino - Italian

This is just a simple word to describe something we see everyday, that little wet circle that gets left on a table after you move a drink. It baffles me that English has yet to come up with a concise word for that phenomenon/mess. The best we have is, "that wet circle that your cup left on the table."

EXAMPLE: Josh, use a coaster, you left a culaccino on my coffee table... again.

Desenrascanco - Portuguese

This is my new favorite word of all time. It basically means to jury-rig some improvised device or plan. It literally means to put something together from whatever you have lying around in order to solve a problem, (So yeah, McGyver.) it would need to be shortened. I like the sound of rascanco.

EXAMPLE: I have a paperclip, a cigarette, and a rubber band, but I think I can rascanco something up to get out us out of this locked prison cell.

BONUS WORD: Pilkunnussija - Finnish

Do you know someone who has to go out of their way to correct your grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc, even at the cost of their own popularity with people? Well you have just met a pilkunnussija. Now unlike the other words on this list, I don't think we should bastardize this word at all. After all, if someone wants to be an unpopular grammar Nazi, then they deserve every last Finnish consonant they get.

EXAMPLE: I know grammar is spelt with an "ar" at the end, you Pilkunnussija!

America the Ugly

Beat it! Beat it! Oh, God, beat it till it stops moving!

Far be it for me to beat a dead horse, (except if it is one of those undead horses that hungers for flesh, then by all means we should beat that hell-beast back to the fire pits of Hades from whence it came,) but after my long hiatus I have had a few things on my mind that I want to get off my chest, (mind-chest?) So with the fact, that this week Congress has basically announced that they will once again fail to move on any sort of meaningful immigration reform, it seems as good a time as any to look at the multicultural identity of America and the soft drink that is cashing in on it.

This year during the Super Bowl one particular ad seemed to blow everyone away, Coca Cola's America the Beautiful. I remember seeing the advertisement and the sum of my reaction was, "Oh, that's kind of sappy. Is there anymore pulled pork?" I barely noticed the thing, because by my standards the commercial was... well pretty standard. Scenes of American landscapes entwined with a rainbow parade of people and cowboy hats. Heck we might as well have had a bunch of celebrities come out and sing, we are the world... which probably wouldn't have bothered people as much, provided they sung it in English. It wasn't till the next day when I found out about the incredibly close-minded backlash people had against the commercial.

Twitter is both a blessing and curse, but sometimes more a curse. Not only does it give a venue and voice to any Tom, Harry and Dickish person who wants to spout nonsense and vileness, but it allows them to conveniently hashtag their idiocy so those those disparate voices can raise together, like a wave of crap that drowns out small villages and quiet pastures. Most of these Twitter offenders came off sounding more stereotypically bigoted than 90% of white men in a Spike Lee movie. (Is that statement racist, or just dated?) Worst of all, the news media (being what it is) further promoted the idiot speech by airing it on TV. I, however, refuse to repeat most of the trash said, but sufficed to say it was ugly, embarrassing, and filled with outrage over the fact that America the Beautiful was not sung in English, despite the fact that most of those offended Tweeters failed to use proper English themselves.

I could go on and talk about how people who make these kind of ignorant and hate-filled statements forget the principles on which America has always survived (freedom, diversity, immigration;) or I could bring up the fact that English is not our official language, (only 80% of Americans speak it as their primary language. The US has never had an official language;) or that English is not this land's first language either, (I'm sure the Navajo or the Cherokee were just as mad when our ancestors arrived and started singing their sacred songs in English;) or that the song itself was written by a lesbian, (I have no snide comment for that one. It's just kind of cool,) but instead I want to try and understand their fear... and yes it is fear.

America is changing radically, and that scares a lot of people, if only because the change is inevitable. By 2042 the US Census Bureau estimates that Americans that identify themselves as Hispanic, black, Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander, etc will out number the population of "White Americans," in the United States. According to the New York Times, Protestants are now a minority religion in the country, and a full one-third of people under the age of 30 no longer associate themselves with any organized religion at all. States are ratifying gay and lesbian marriages quicker than falling dominoes and now we even have two states that have legalized marijuana. Combine this with the fact that China is poised to take our place as the next global economic superpower and  the rise of joint-European power, anyone who clings to the old ideals of a 1950's-like America, has to be pretty freaked out. They can see the light coming at the end of the tunnel and as far as they are concerned, it's an onrushing train coming to shatter everything they believe and hold dear.

Because Dolphin-Americans have a voice too.

Progressives and younger generations tend to look at these people and laugh because it seems absurd that they would find fault with something as simple as a song sung in several languages in a soft drink commercial, but to the conservatives and the hold-outs its just another sign of what they fear, change. So they do what all humans do when confronted with their fears, they laugh at it, they mock it, they deny it, they stand stubbornly against it, and all in the hopes to minimize it and maybe even get it to go away. Unfortunately for them, its not going away. This change is more inevitable that that penny I get whenever I buy 99 cent milk, but that is fortunate for all of us whether we know it or not.

The United States will survive, not despite our multiculturalism, but because of it. Think about it this way: Thanks to our influx of immigrants by 2050 the 16 to 64 age group is expected to grow 42%, (that's about 350 million people) even when at the same time other developed nations such as those in Europe and East Asia will have more than a third of their population over the age of 65. In other words, when countries like China, Japan, Germany, Russia, etc have a majority of their population who is no longer able to work, America will still have a vibrant and young workforce. That's good, because with a large youth population comes not just a young workforce, but change, innovation, and the ability to make our world better.

America has always been a place of change and growth. Right now we are stuck in a cycle of anger and frustration, class inequality, immigration disputes, an entrenched political system, and so much more. (And, in a lot of ways, that tastes sourer than 99 cent milk.) Our very definitions are changing as we redefine things like marriage or copyright or patriotism, and that scares some people a lot, (and probably a lot of people some.) That is natural, but we need to find a way to cope with our fears instead of taking to social media to spew off the first nasty thought that comes to mind. That serves no other purpose than to cast a shadow on all of us. We will continue on and we will continue to prosper, believe it or not. It's not an easy road in front of us, we have a lot of work to do and more than a few fights ahead of us, but also some joys, and one of those is the joy of a refreshing Coca Cola, because regardless of what side of this argument you are on, let's face it, Coke is the winner. We are still talking about their commercial, after all.

A Hi and Lo-atus

To see all the helmets visit the original Imgur Site

Hello everyone, I am back from my hiatus and just in time to wish my congratulations to all my fellow nerds and nerdettes in Seattle. The Big (Please Don't Sue Me, NFL) Game was a terrible one by any standards, but at least I could be happy for all the cool people out in the... I want to say... "Starbucks City," who got their first championship title. Also, the real winner of the big game, in my opinion, was Stephen Colbert, but then again I find Colbert to be a winner everyday. His pistachios commercial(s) were by far the best on the air that night, at least nationally. In Georgia, some lawyer paid for a 2-minute ad spot to air the pilot trailer for his movie (i.e. law firm.) I will admit that I enjoyed the Seinfeld bit between Jerry and George, and that is only remarkable because Seinfeld has been off the air for fifteen-years and yet we still cling onto it, like a naked man clings onto a newspaper for some last nostalgic shred of decency.

Also, since my last post, Mother Nature has made a fool of me. My previous pleas for snow in the face of global warming has become somewhat laughable as I am now pleading for the snow to stop. There is so much of the damn stuff on the ground that I saw white walkers doing battle with Imperial snowtroopers as I went to work the other day. I also want to remind everyone that just because this has been a record winter doesn't mean that Global Warming is still not a thing. The trends are still rising toward warmer global climates, it is just not a steady climb. There are dips and peaks like the stock market after a drunken Tuesday.

As for my own life I took a few weeks off from writing this blog in hopes of getting some headway on my novel, but truthfully I wound up mostly just playing Assassin's Creed III. Sometimes I think it must have been so much easier to be a writer when there were no video games, but then I realize that that also means there were no computers and then I'm right back to writing on a typewriter without spell-check... So I have to recant my previous statement.

This brings me to a dilemma I have been struggling with (and excuse me for getting personal,) but lately I have begun to question myself as a writer. I am good enough to know that I am not spectacular, by any account. My spelling and grammar mistakes alone are enough to tell me that, and also I have found that I come up with really great concepts, but often lack in execution. My novel has stalled and the real reason I have not posted a blog post in the past six or seven weeks is because I have found myself running out of ideas. It has been a frustrating time for me, as writing has usually been as natural as breathing to me (which thanks to my advanced age of 30 is also becoming harder.)

For a while now I have been debating giving up the craft. It would be so much easier to not have to deal with the time commitment or the mountain of frustration I sometimes allow myself to get buried under. I could have so much more time for things like playing video games or even reading (which becomes restricted due to my writing habits.) I only allow myself to read things which might currently enhance what I am writing, which is why I haven't picked up a comic book in over a year, because I am afraid my squirrel-like mind will get so distracted with superheroes that it will pull me back into the black hole that is my pen and paper  superhero RPG rulebook. I can't let myself get distracted, but I miss comic books.

I am two hundred pages through a novel where when I look back I can't even tell if it's good or not. This could very well turn out to be another Journey Home (my 500-page young adult fiasco that probably would have been more coherent if I had given my story outline to a monkey and asked him to embellish it a bit.) With my career and personal life moving on, it is becoming harder and harder some days to put so much of myself into these two or three year projects that just end with misery. Everything I write lately feels hackneyed and insincere, like I'm just going through the motions. As of a week ago, I was ready to shut down this blog completely and call it quits, but I found something in the narcissistic and irrelevant cacophony that is Facebook that made me pause. This:

THE GAP by Ira Glass from frohlocke on Vimeo.

It is narrated by public radio host, Ira Glass, and you know what... It made me feel better. It made me feel like I wasn't alone, that everyone goes through this sort of doubt. My girlfriend also reminded me that it takes George R. R. Martin six years to write a new novel, (much to every one's frustration,) but I can understand why it takes him that long. Everyone thinks writing is just inspiration spilled onto a page. It's not. Inspiration plays its part but more often than not it is depressing, exhilarating, back-breaking soul-pouring that results in a mess of words which still require another year of editing before it even begins to sound coherent. It's a lot like shaping a sculpture from a lump of clay, except that you have to extract the clay first from your own flesh, which is something no one ever tells you.

Maybe this video is the reason why I sat down and wrote out this blog post, or maybe its because I realized that (despite everything else) I am, have, and always will be a writer at heart. It's more than how I define myself, it's how I see the world. Regardless of where I am or what my job title is, I have always labeled myself as "writer," and I don't know if I can let go of that label, maybe because its right or maybe because I'm scared to... Maybe both. Ultimately, it doesn't matter. I still have the desire and the passion for the kind of literary engineering that can only be accomplished by forming my world through the lens of the written word, because I find that writing is a lot like people. 

We are all made up of strange parts and words that function differently, limbs that move, hearts that beat, hair that grows, and memories that fill out heads, but alone they are small and empty. We carry with us a greater significance than just the sum of our parts. A story is like that. The words themselves have meaning, but the story conveys more than any solitary word ever could. A human has meaning and depth, but the sum of humanity is a story more powerful than any one person ever could be... As for my meaning, I'm a writer, and it is good to be back.