You Can't Keep America Down

One year ago today some 3,000 people, many of them heroes or other people with moustaches, perished in terrorist attacks on America. According to the powers of information, the terrorists assumed this would break the American spirit (which differs from human nature in some unexplained way). To prove this theory incorrect, Americans stood united today and had American Idol grand prize winner Kelly Clarkson sing the National Anthem at the Lincoln Memorial. Seismologists stood along side others with heads bowed, unable to detect any possible spinning of graves.

“We should never forget” says nearly every telecast or other public memorial and if you stayed in your fallout shelter, syphilis-blind with carpet glue in your ears trying against the forces of nature to forget -they’d kick in your door to remind you. The anniversary events have also been conducted as though this was something that hasn’t been beaten into your head every hour of every day since it happened. No one has forgotten, even those who’s own personal tragedies and trials have made it a trivial footnote.

If there’s one thing that makes me feel sympathy for the victims’ families it’s that they aren’t being allowed to forget for even a second. My father died last year and I can’t imagine what it would be like if he was publicly remembered in the same way. I open up the paper every day for a year and one story or another screams “Hey, don’t forget your Dad’s dead!“. I sit in traffic on my way to work behind bumper stickers saying “Don‘t forget your Dad‘s dead!” and used car dealers have cheesy letter board signs declaring that they remember my dead Dad. After a week I’m ready to punch someone in the eye so I go to a Springsteen concert to hear Born to Run but instead he has a whole new album about my dead Dad. George Bush and the God Squad run ads on television warning the good citizens that “If you do drugs, you killed Doug’s Dad!”. I’d watch in horror as GW used my dead Dad’s name to garner support to invade Iraq only to turn the channel to a football game where they are opening with “God Bless America” being sung by the brave surgeon who tried to cut the cancer out of dead Dad’s ass. I think that might irritate the fuck out of me, not just the drama junkies of the world free-hitching on my grief wagon but also because I bet on football and would probably find weeping halftime footage of my Dad’s colon along with wandering shots of folks wearing awareness ribbons in the stands to be some kind of jinx.I wish there were some family members out there who would speak out against a government that is using their lost loved one as a poster child to further their own agenda of bad ideas. If only one widow of a New York firefighter to come out and talk about great times she had doing drugs with her husband. Out of 343 rescue workers who died, I’m sure roughly shitloads of them did drugs on occasion. Maybe GW could clarify for their families whether they were heroes or terrorists. The stories are out there but you’re unlikely to hear them. You are less likely to hear someone tell you that any of the 3,000 victims was an asshole, at least not in public. That’s my problem with memorials to people I don’t know. For every person who dies there’s someone out there who is really glad they are dead and I’d rather not take sides.

When I die there will be plenty of people who will be dancing like helmeted spastics and I can’t say they’d be out of line. Let them piss on my grave and curse the gods for taking so long to eradicate my existence. But if I die in such an enormous public spectacle that Celine Dion feels compelled to eulogize me through song, please dig me up and run me around town on a pole like Weekend at Bernie’s until she believes that I’ve been brought back to life and returns home.

Like bad tuna, you can’t keep America down.

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Speaking of, we were packing up the car to leave Colorado Springs a couple weeks back when Sean Rouse, the feature act, started complaining of stomach pains. We’d drank enough all week to chalk it up to a hangover but decided that I’d drive him back towards LA while Renee drove my car. We spent the night at her parents house in the mountains and the next day he was no better so I kept driving to Vegas, where he got really bad but - fuck - we’re in Vegas and it’ll have to wait. Renee and I rambled and drank and frolicked like happy remedial school retards while Sean stayed in the room holding his guts and sweating thru every stabbing pain. On morning three we all got back to LA and Renee dropped him at the emergency room at Cedar-Sinai.

Sean Rouse, eluding yet another attempt on his life by God (not pictured).

In Colorado Springs, Renee had stopped at Big Lots and, among other things, bought me a Starkist Travel Tuna Kit because she loves me and knows I love tuna and crackers on the road and that I don’t mind eating discontinued dollar store canned warehouse seafood. Unfortunately Sean got to it first and spent two days in Cedar Sinai with salmonella poisoning

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Thanks to the folks in Charlotte at the Perch. Always a good time. Tell the Passmore’s that Renee says thanks for the candles. I’m still picking wax out of my ass hairs.

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You are either on my mailing list or on the side of the terrorists. There is no middle ground.

stanhope