Andy Rooney Angry

My wife is over there at the sewing table leafing through a catalog of kid toys. There's a two page spread of fire truck/construction vehicle toys and there's boys playing with said toys. On the next page, there's a two page spread of fairy wings and kitchen sets, and there's girls playing with said toys.

Surprised? I'm not. Indignant? Not me.

I don't know what has come over me lately, but I don't care-- about a startlingly high number of things that, maybe, one day, would have got me outraged enough to... um.... I don't know. Write a blog post?

I used to be what might be called an A.Y.M. (Angry Young Man). I got really hot and pissy at the drop of a hat, and I'd write A.A.L.'s (Angry Ass Letters). I'd sit at the computer and pound out a fire-breathing letter to a company, an organization, an editor. My letters were often answered, or published-- I guess my words aren't so easy to toss in a bin or insert in a shredder, and maybe I take some amount of comfort or pride in that. I like my words. My words with friends.

These days, it takes a lot to get me A.R.A. (Andy Rooney Angry). Maybe I'm more mature, maybe I'm more depressed, maybe I'm more consumed and more draggin' the wagon. More... tired. Maybe I've realized that getting angry only raises my pulse and my blood pressure. Generally speaking, my anger does very little for and to other people, it hasn't created much social change or more world order.

My anger got a plaque replaced on the Ben Franklin Boulevard-- but that was years ago. In 1970, a police sergeant named Frank Von Colln was talking on the phone at a small guard house when someone burst through the door and shot and killed him. Von Colln's holster was empty-- his revolver cold and useless inside his desk drawer.

Years later, a small park on the Ben Franklin was dedicated to him, and a wooden plaque was erected proclaiming that this small patch of ground with a ball field was to be known as Von Colln Memorial Park. But the years hadn't been kind and it had fallen into disrepair, it was falling apart. Maybe it had been vandalized, or just weathered-- I don't know. Still, the end result was the same: the sign looked like shit, and wasn't exactly a fitting tribute to the man whose name was etched into the wood.

So, I wrote a letter-- I think it was to the director of the Philly parks & rec department. I tore him a new asshole, ripped into him for allowing such a sacrosanct thing to go to hell, though I'm sure even this guy had never even heard of Von Colln Memorial Park. For good measure, I searched through newspaper archives and found a photograph of Von Colln, lying on the floor by his desk, riddled with bullet holes, the telephone receiver beside his body, and I paper-clipped the picture to my letter. A little gratuitous-- maybe. Three weeks later, I received a letter of apology (Apology? To me? Who the hell was I?) and a couple months later, there was a new, beautiful sign up. Money well spent.

Years earlier, while I was still in college and had just published a book honoring fallen police officers, I was on the phone with the daughter of slain NYC Patrolman Waverly Jones. Jones and his partner, Joseph Piagentini were killed on May 21, 1971 as they walked back to their patrol car together after answering an unfounded call at a housing complex in Harlem. Jones, black, was shot from behind four times and killed instantly. His white partner was mercilessly tortured as he lived through being shot thirteen times. He died on the way to the hospital. Jones's daughter, now a grown woman, told me that there were two trees planted outside the 32nd Precinct to honor her father and his partner, and that her father's tree and plaque had fallen into disrepair, while Piagentini's was clean and beautiful.

So, I picked up the phone and called the Precinct commander. Miraculously, the desk sergeant transferred the call and the commander picked up. I told him who I'd just spoken to and what she'd said, and I shared how disappointed she and I were in the department-- adding that the inequality with which the memorials to these two men were being treated smacked of the very racism that a black-and-white patrol partnership in Harlem in the 1970s was trying to betray. I said that the "New York Daily News" would probably be very interested in covering that angle of the story, should they happen to hear about it from someone.

A few months later, I was invited to a re-dedication of the trees and plaques. Both patrolmen's families were invited, there would be pipers, and a Catholic police chaplain would be there to bless the trees and the plaques, I was told. I declined the invitation, probably because I was still Andy Rooney Angry.

Looking back on who I was, I miss being angry, because it got things done. It strikes me that this post might strike you as self-congratulatory but, it's not-- it's just a bit of story-telling of a bygone era in my life, when I was different-- wound up and pissed off. Nowadays, it seems like everyone's getting angry-- it's suddenly fashionable when, ten years ago, I felt like I was doing that dance by myself. With Facebook, though, people get angry and they make a status update, they post a link to a polarizing article, they sign an online petition by clicking a box, they say something snarky about a Republican candidate in a sweater vest. If they're REALLY angry, they'll change their Profile Picture.

And I get it-- we don't have time to get all panty-twisted about every injustice in the world. Brad Pitt can't build affordable housing everywhere. If we spent all our time activisting, who'd wash the dishes and feed the marmoset? But maybe we can do more, if we really care. And, if we don't really care, why pretend? Because we want to look good for our "friends"? Maybe we should wait until we're Andy Rooney Angry, or risk looking disingenuous, or H.C.P. (Holden Caulfield Phony).

Sometimes I wish I was still an Angry Young Man. But usually I don't. It's just too damn hard.

Spinach: One of My Favorite Things

My favorite Muppets are Statler and Waldorf.

My favorite Disney movie is "The Love Bug".

My favorite thing to wear is a suit-- preferably a dark blue one, three-piece, like they used to wear when fine clothes were fine.

My favorite nickname for my wife (and I have LOTS) is "Buddy", even though it was Richard Nixon's favorite nickname for Pat. He may have been an asshole, but she was his buddy, and I like that.

My favorite thing to watch on YouTube are old outtakes of Tim Conway busting up Harvey Korman. That's real kooo-ala.

My favorite thing to do in the middle of the woods on a secluded hike is sing Gilbert & Sullivan patter songs with Mrs. Apron at full tilt.

My favorite songs are sad-- without exception. Folk songs, tunes that are mournful and revolve around loss or despair or death-- ships sinking, people dying, lovers who cannot be together.

My favorite blog posts to write are introspective, and quiet. It feels like less of a performance. Not that I'm not funny. I am, I guess. It's just that bringing out that part of me feels like work. And nobody likes work. That's why people play the lottery.

My favorite American musicals, “Assassins” and “Into the Woods” were written by Stephen Sondheim. I think he's a genius, and most Americans who write musicals, well, aren’t.

My favorite people, mostly, all died over a hundred years ago. I don't know what it is about people, but they seemed to be much better before we started videotaping them all the time.

My favorite television personality is Andy Rooney, but I haven't watched "60 Minutes" in years because I'm scared that, if I do, he's going to die. And I don't want Andy Rooney to die. He once wrote that he only hoped immortality for two souls, his mother and his dog. How can you not love that guy? He's all acerbic, but I'll bet that's just work. He's just a big mushpot, like me.

I once wrote Andy Rooney an email, in 2004, seeking his advice on how to become a writer. You know, a real one. I was astonished when I opened my email later that day to see he'd written back. It had a fair amount of typos, so I knew he'd written it himself, on a computer, which he hates. He likes typewriters, like me. Here's what he wrote:

"Advice is spinach. It doesnt help. People who give it enjoy doing it butusually dont know what theyre talking about. When I was trying to make aliving writing magazine articles, I read a lot of magazines to see what sortof thing they were using and took my cue from that. I sold a lot of magazinearticles but Id write one Id hope to sell to The Saturday Evening Post for$1500 and it usually ended up in something called PAGEANT or CORONET for$300. Thanks for yout good letter. Sorry I cant help."

The thing is, of course, he did help.

"Thanks for yout good letter."

That helped.

I got praise from Andrew Aitken Rooney.

I may not have become, and I may never become a professional writer-- if that is indeed something I still want. But that's okay. Because I have lots of eccentric tastes, like writers do. Lots of odd preferences and likes and proclivities, and they all congregate around me to help make me who or what I am. Whatever that is.

Oh-- and that email is one of my favorite things, too.

I Know How to Be Famous

I used to think I wanted to be famous. Then I realized that you don't need a lot of money, cars, noteriety, and ceaseless blowjobs from skinny, anonymous blondes to be an obnoxious asshole that nobody likes.

My decided lack of fame doesn't haunt me nearly as much as it did when I was a frustrated early twentysomething and I had delusions about being a young, dapper Andy Rooney, whose rapier wit propelled the country into a new enlightened age of superior elocution and elevated thought. I mean, Andy Rooney has existed for around eight decades, and we're all still basically retarded.

But I definitely wanted to be famous when I was younger, though I didn't really know why. I suppose, more for my own benefit than for society's, in spite of what I might have said in the above paragraph. I mean, really, who does fame really benefit besides the famous? I haven't especially found my life improving since Rachel Ray got her own TV show and cloying catchphrases.

Fame, more than anything, though, seemed like an awful lot of work when I was younger. You had to move to New York City or Los Angeles, plaster the walls of your shitty apartment with photographs of yourself taken from plays or concerts, forsake every living friend and relation in favor of your own narrow, obsessive pursuit of personal glory and eat nothing but pizza slices for two years while busking your soul away in some subway alcove while nursing STDs given to you by some unwashed, 108-pound groupie with black eyeshadow and a spiderweb tattooed on her whaletail.

You know-- until you get "discovered."

For a lazy little shit like me, who expects adulation and recognition to be inserted into his bloodstream via a Ron Popeil flavor-injector enema, that seemed like rather a lot to go through for no actual promise of victory.

I straddle the tenuous divide between unabated arrogance and unmitigating self-doubt. On the one hand, I was convinced that there was absolutely no need for me to go to college-- that every talent I possessed, whether it was a knack for the written word or a remarkable penchant for embodying another skin on a stage, was perfectly honed and would in no way benefit from advanced instruction. On the other hand, I was also convinced that I would never amount to anything and that God would make my dick fall off in a gangrenous heap because He wouldn't be able to bear witnessing me procreate and bring into the world another talent-free wretch.

So, I guess I never fully believed that shooting for fame was a worthwhile pursuit. And maybe that's a good thing. I still can't articulate what I learned in college, except that 20-year-olds shouldn't be allowed to have their own radio shows, that unmarried sex with Catholic girls isn't worth it and ditto on the unlimited meal plan.

Of course, it's tempting nowadays to rethink the whole idea of being famous, since it's changed so much. People like Paris Hilton have taught us that you don't need any talent whatsoever in order to be famous, and hundreds of other slackjawed morons, unwatchable dunderheads and irrepressible himbos have followed in her wake to solidify that notion. We are no longer a society that rewards talent, we have turned into a mass of idiots that obsess over... well... I don't even know what it is exactly that we obsess over, what facet of a person's personality or ass that we can't get enough of in pop culture. But, whatever it is, it's usually several phyla removed from talent.

And I don't mean to pick on people like "The Situation," Lord knows. Take a look at the publishing industry. It used to be you had to have studied/fake orgasmed under Norman Mailer just to get a publisher to look at your manuscript. Now, people like Julie Powell and the chick who wore a brown dress every day for a year, and the guy who lived like Jesus for a year, and the family that bought nothing from China for a year, etc, etc, etc are turning into authors. All it takes is 365 days, a blog, some angst, and you're all set!

Now, this newfangled way to get famous has been tried and true tested over the course of the last couple years and it's pretty fool-proof-- and I have to admit that, for such an obsessive blogger as I, it's pretty tempting. I mean, I could eat nothing but turnips for a year and write about that. Or, I could walk around with my fly down every day for a year and blog about people's reactions-- I could even wear a hidden camera and snap pictures of their aghast faces and post them on my blog instead of actual words-- lots of bloggers just put up pictures and get away with it; why couldn't I?

I could do it. Because I know how to be famous in 2010.