Ramblings of a damn fool...

Oh how I love her. I miss her. The gaping wound she left in me has bled my will to live into a shiny puddle of remorse on the floor. It relfects my reflection as I recount the things I did wrong and those I never did at all.

71 Pristine Virgins

Oh death penalty. How we judge thee, discuss thee and flounder on thee. To kill or not to kill. This is the question. And most recently, this has become the question concerning Zacarias Moussaoui. Should this man, who publicly avows his dedication to the cause of Al Qaeda and fervently wishes that he could have followed through on his plan to crash a hijacked plan full of innocent civilians into more innocent civilians, be put to death? Currently his defense is attempting to get the option of the death penalty thrown out due to mental incompetence that stems from paranoid schizophrenia. Ok. We've seen this argument before. But this man attacked US on OUR soil. He should rightfully die. He has taken or plotted to take the right to life of innocent people and therefore forfeited his right to live.

But lets think more closely about this. Is death the correct punishment for a man such as Moussaoui? A Muslim suicide bomber intent on destroying the fabric of Western society? A man who truly believes that upon his death he will be welcomed into Paradise by a multitude of virgins and revel in the blessings of Allah for eternity? It seems to me that we would only be helping Moussaoui to complete his mission. I say we let him rot in jail. I don't think his sanity is at question. It's pretty clear that anyone who would consider performing such an atrocious act is insane. But medically crazy or not, instead of helping him on his way to paradise, lets make sure he experiences a little earthbound hell first.

The Downward Spiral of Child Stars

The other night I watched a particularly riveting episode of Breaking Bonaduce. The one where he breaks down and yells a lot. Oh wait, that’s all of them. I think it probably has something to do with his uber-extreme tan. Somebody should really tell him that ginger kids and sun equals not good.

My thoughts turned to, “What the hell happened to this guy?” I mean, he was a star, made some money, got some publicity and then dropped off the face of the earth and got hooked on all kinds of shit. That got me thinking: what about Screech, Todd Bridges and all the other child stars who never made the transition? What the hell happened? Is there something about being a child that makes it easier to act? When you grow up do you lose that ability to immerse yourself in the “world” of play acting and find yourself out of a job and out of luck?

This makes sense to me. Hell, I still have vivid memories of myself flying like Superman in the back yard. And I don’t mean pretend flying, I mean zooming around the sky arms stretched out in front of me cape flapping in the wind flying. Obviously this was my mind working overtime…way overtime. But it was easy to believe. To become a cowboy or Indian, army man or tea party patron is second nature to children. Growing up in a world that demands complacency and imposes rigid structure, the only outlet for the creative energy inherent in every child is the mind. Or, in the case of child actors, the set.

Then we grow up.
Life gets real.
Acting becomes hard to do because we no longer see the point.
We just suffer through each miserable day trying to get to the two day break of the weekend.
Great.

Is this what happens to the child stars that seem to crash and burn? Some are quite successful. Jodie Foster is still around. Some hit drugs and hookers. Do they forget how to act? Is this denigration of their life’s work due to their inability to pretend anymore? I would like to claim that it is.

Your comments please.

Next time: geishas and college girls – same thing different era?