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.

An Open Letter to the Guy in the Black Passat Wagon

Hi.

Just what the fuck is your deal, pal?

You insist on parking your black Passat wagon the wrong way on our street, and you do it every day. Parking is only permitted on one side of our street, and everyone else parks facing west-- the flow of traffic, but you park your black Passat wagon facing east. Yours is the only car parked the wrong way.

Our street is only one block long, as you know, so the fact that there are only approximately fifteen cars on our street all doing one thing and your car doing another really kind of makes you stand out. The red Fit parks correctly. The old fucks who own the stupid-looking, bloated-ass Buick Rendezvous and the Buick Century that is mysteriously covered in a clear, plastic tarpaulin-- those cars face the right way. Even the black family who abandoned their non-running 1990 Honda Accord with three tires and a donut at the corner of our street a month ago at least had the decency to park it facing forward.

But then there's your black Passat wagon, facing the wrong way, every day, like a great, big, black, German middle finger extended not only at parking rules, not only at The Man, but at the rest of us who try to get through life doing the right thing.

Doing the right thing doesn't concern you much, does it? See because, if it did, you would park correctly. It's really not hard. Some of us come home from a hard day's work and we actually have to drive around the block in order to have our cars facing the correct way when it's time to park on our street. It takes an extra, oh, I don't know, forty-seven seconds. You could do that, too, if you wanted. But you clearly don't want to.

And I know why.

Because you're bald, motherfucker.

That's right. I've seen you. Your head looks like a giant penis because it's completely hairless and bullet-shaped, and you're not sexy like Yul Brenner or even Kojak or Skinner from "The X-Files" or Mr. fucking Clean. You just look like a cock, and you behave like one, too. A defiant, rule-breaking, parking-decorum-ignoring dickhead.

And you're a mean sonofafuck, too. I know-- I've heard you yelling at your little son who, hopefully, will one day grow up into the kind of guy who will run you over with your own black Passat wagon.

Look, I'm sorry all your hair fell out and shit, and you yell at your son because you're impotent and frustrated and angry at God and all, but, seriously, will you just park your car the way everybody else on our street does? You're nothing special, okay? You don't work for the CIA or NASA or Obama or anything cool like that, so you don't get parking privileges on our street, sorry. There's two cars the next street over that have State Department license plates and, guess what, cock-neck? They park the right way, even though they're too cool for rules.

I realize that, for some reason, you are under the impression that societal norms, the unspoken, unwritten rules and codes that keep us all in line and not participating regularly in looting, wife-swapping or ritual murder simply don't apply to you. I don't know-- maybe I should be writing an open letter to your fucking mom who obviously let you track mud and shit into the house growing up and looked the other way while you kicked the family dog in the face. But there's a lot that can be gained emotionally by simply playing along with everybody else. For one thing, people won't write angry blog posts about you. Then, maybe people in the neighborhood will actually say "hi" to you. But by choosing to abandon and forsake the simplicity of everyday courtesy, you are putting you and your family on a very lonely island, where your black Passat wagon is the glittering, glowing, and unkind beacon of "FUCK YOU" to the rest of the world.

Is that the world in which you want to live? Ask yourself this question and then maybe you'll spend the extra forty-seven seconds it takes to drive around the fucking block and have your car facing the same way everybody else's does. You'll be amazed at how good conformity feels sometimes.

Sincerely,
Mr. Apron

P.S. Oh, and thanks so much for baking us brownies and throwing us a block party and so generously welcoming us to the neighborhood.

Dickhead.