A Big Deal

I woke up on Friday the 13th with a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe it was because I had gone to bed immediately after watching the Lakers blow the biggest lead in NBA Finals history and suffer a humiliating loss to the Celtics. Maybe it was just dry mouth from drinking copious amounts of wine during the game, but either way something wasn’t right with the world that morning. I arrived at my job precisely at 7 am to discover that my partner wasn’t there yet. Odd, because he always beats me to work, even when I’m early. This wasn’t a good sign, because chances were he wasn’t coming to work that day, and that would mean that I would have to unload a 1,600 pound shipment by myself, and I was hungover. No big deal. Pain in the ass, but not a BIG DEAL. When I walked into my receiving room, I noticed someone had inexplicably written “Friday the 13th” on our dry erase board. “God dammit, who the hell…” I muttered to myself. I’m not typically superstitious, but glaringly creepy stuff will get to me. For instance, I once had a Black Crow land on my car and squawk thirteen times the morning I was going to make a lengthy drive. Don’t worry, I made it. So there I was, perching my hungover ass on the desk, alone, staring at an omen. This was going to be a bad day.

As I am like to do, I pulled myself together, erased the omen, and immediately received a call from my partner…he was coming, he was just out late celebrating the Celtics victory, and was a little hungover. Wonderful. My team was spanked, and I still dutifully made it to my crappy job on time. He showed up two and half hours later, after I had taken in the shipment, and was laughing because someone had erased what he had written on the board. “Yeah, that was me,” I said. “What are you superstitious dude?” “Not usually, sometimes, well, it depends…” Oy. The day proceeded pretty normally from then: coffee, inappropriate jokes that would get us fired from any other job, coffee, talk radio, mind-numbingly boring work, soul-crushingly agonizing realizations that I have a college degree and I sort books for a living, unparalleled bi-polar bouts of depression and sexually charged manic joy all congealing under interrogation style florescent lights as if God was playing good cop/bad cop with Jesus to make me confess that my life is going nowhere, more coffee, etc. Around twelve thirty the witty banter on the talk radio station halted, and one of the personalities announced that he had sad news to report. I stopped trash talking for a minute to listen. Tim Russert had just died.

The news personalities showed due respect. I was moved to nearly the point of tears, though I would never let it show amidst the manly domain of the Barnes and Noble stockroom. I was standing in this exact spot when I received the news that Heath Ledger had died some months ago, and I had had a similar reaction. That day hit me close to home because he was a young actor who was about to emerge as one of the finest of a generation. This day hit me because Tim Russert was the eminent political reporter of our country, and was universally regarded as one of the last truly decent journalists. I know, I’m a nerd, but this was for politicos what the death of Alec Guinness was to Star Wars fans. It was a big deal. When I made it home I flipped on MSNBC to see a shaken Keith Olbermann host a series of equally shaken guests eulogizing Russert, who, it turns out, had died suddenly of a heart attack not two hours before in the NBC studios, while recording voice-over tracks for his upcoming show. The tears finally came to my eyes. I was pinned to my couch for a half-hour, realizing that the Lakers’ loss had paled in comparison. Finally, I broke free from the somber face of Olbermann, and sat in Friday traffic for twenty five minutes, to travel a meager six miles to my friend’s bar.

If there is a self-pity inherent in treating yourself to several beers at 4pm after receiving heart breaking news, then I was neck deep in it. I had just seen a steady stream of heavy hitters of the political world nearly break down on national TV because of how much this guy meant to people. Even Barack Obama and John McCain stopped what they were doing to call in and pay tribute. Needless to say, I was a little caught up in the moment. It was a deep jarring sting then, when Russert’s face appeared on the bar’s TV, and several of the regulars began to rejoice in his death. Appalled, I buried my face in a Los Angeles Times article about the Lakers’ meltdown. I heard them say things like: “Russert? Fuck that liberal son-ova-bitch!” “Fat fucker’s dining on dirt now” “Rot in hell Timmy,” and the like. One fat, mangled jackass, with a tube of mustard bulging from his shirt pocket, was particularly harsh. Every few minutes, for the duration of his time at the bar, he would scream, “TIMMY!” at the top of his lungs, jolting me back to reality from my Hefeweizen induced buzz. I finally asked my bartender friend what his name was, as he clearly was the type of useless hunk of shit that would regularly patronize a dive of this sort in the afternoon. “Oh, that’s just Robo, ignore him,” she said. Robo? Perfect. Three beers in and I was contemplating fighting a colossus of a man-child called Robo. I figured I could handle him; he looked like he weighed about as much as my shipment that morning, and I kicked that shipment’s ass.

But my cooler head prevailed, and I realized that I was in fact in a dive bar, and perhaps the amped up opinion of drunken regulars wasn’t exactly something I needed to take to heart. I can be sensitive sometimes. To me, Russert’s death was tragic, but most likely, nobody remotely close to my age felt the same way. So, as I am like to do, I pulled myself together, and that night went out with some friends, where I was briefly accosted by a young actor acquaintance of mine. He proceeded to launch into his version of the speech…THE speech. Actors will know what I am talking about. It’s the paragraph you have memorized to justify what you are doing with your life should the need arise, both to yourself and to those around you. It usually comes out neatly packaged after someone asks you, “so how is acting going?” which is the worst fucking thing a struggling actor can be asked, so we dole out our charming version of the speech, because the truth: “Fucking HORRENDOUS, and I don’t want to talk about it EVER,” would come across a little harsh. But for an actor to launch into the speech unsolicited, as he did, can be both inspiring and a little sad. His was rather upbeat, mostly about staying positive and achieving success by not stepping on anyone’s toes, and it had me actively nodding my head, and giving my polite “uh huh, yes,” and “well it sounds like you have the right attitude,” and the like, all the while desperately scanning the area for a friendly face that I could somehow plead to rescue me with my eyes. I have convincing eyes. It made me think about what it was like to be an actor fresh out of college and ready to take over the world, and how I wish I could spare this kid, annoying as he was, the heartbreak that would come over the next couple years.

That night I went to bed a little weighed down from the events of the day. But everything was going to be okay, I told myself. I’m not superstitious, but Friday the 13th was coming to end. Besides, it really is just another day on the calendar. I pulled myself out of bed the next morning, and made it to work by 7 am.

More to come. Thanks for caring.