Nuke the Moon

Well, NASA's finally cracked up.

Tomorrow morning, at 7:30am EST, they're going to fire a rocket straight at the fucking moon.

Ah, boys and their insatiable need for destruction.

They are going to blow up a portion of the moon in search of water. They are hopeful that there will be water there, ostensibly to sustain longer manned missions on the moon-- but I think they want us to live there after we've turned Earth into the solar system's largest septic tank.

I've long lived in thin-lipped, school-marmish disapproval of NASA and their risky, poorly-executed endeavors that have cost the lives of some of this country's greatest folks. I probably rail against NASA in part because I don't understand the larger point behind some of their missions, something I freely admit, and yet, when they build space crafts with faulty heat shields and capsules that disintegrate and burn up in the atmosphere, well, you've kind of got to wonder-- are they cramming a bunch of bold-minded geniuses into the equivalent of a 1990s Kia and blasting that motherfucker up there while the folks at mission control sit with assholes puckered and jaws clenched, crossing all their fingers and toes and elbows?

Probably.

But now, instead of risking the lives of real humans on a spaceship that might crash, they're using remote-controlled rockets that will definitely crash, because that's what rockets do. The rocket will be followed by a satellite that will communicate images and data back to Earth before it too crashes into the crater created by the rocket.

Can't you just hear the comb-overed geeks at Cape Canaveral?

"Fuckin' awesome, man!"

Yeah. You need to get laid.

When I heard this morning that scientists were going to slam a rocket into the moon, I couldn't help thinking about 12th grade Astronomy, and my old schoolmate, Ted. Ted and I both took Astronomy because we were too severely retarded to handle high school Physics, even at the non-honors level. Turns out, it was the best decision I made in high school, besides opting out of 12th grade math and parting my hair. Ted and I raised such hell in Astronomy that we essentially had ownership over the class, and the teacher, who was so amused by our off-color and off-the-wall antics, never seemed to mind. When the teacher came in with delivery room photographs of his new daughter, I inquired if any of them were "R-rated." Ted took a keen interest in the baby's nutrition and asked if our teacher was breastfeeding. Our poor, harrassed teacher's face turned red and, through his smile he said, "Boys, can we have a little couth, please?"

That was his favorite, rhetorical request for us. "Boys, can we have a little couth, please?"

Regrettably, there was no couth to be had. We openly sexually harrassed the only attractive female student in the class, Kathryn.

"Can I sit next to Kathryn during the exam, please?" I asked while tests were being handed out.

"Why?" our teacher asked, "So you can cheat?"

"Who said anything about cheating. I just like the way she smells."

The only reason I passed the course was because I scored 60 extra credit points on the final by standing up in front of the class and singing , from memory, the entire "Galaxy Song" from Monty Python's 1983 film, "The Meaning of Life," which contains lyrics like,

"Just remember that you're standing,
On a plant that's evolving,
Revolving at 900 miles an hour.
It's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power."

It was a dare, by the teacher.

Ted, however, provided most of the amusement in the class, and he emboldened me to go further and further with my own antics. He bicycled to school, routinely showing up in the dead of winter wearing cargo shorts, Timberlands, and an EMS fleece vest with no shirt on underneath. He drank 20 ounces of coffee in the morning and did drugs through the afternoon. His bizarre black hair stood one-and-a-half feet tall. He laughed like a wild animal having sex in fast-forward, and I knew that classroom was the only possible location in the universe that he and I could be a team.

I'll never forget one day the teacher stood at the front of the room and he asked what we thought would the most worthwile scientific endeavor relating to the study of astronomy. Ted's hand shot up straight as a yardstick. Because it was fun, the teacher called on him. Ted shouted lustily,

"NUKE THE MOON!"

That became his rallying cry. Sometimes he would shout it out in the middle of tests, or in the hallway in between classes. He probably yelled "Nuke the moon!" at his wedding, if there has been such an event. I don't know where Ted is today, I suppose I could stalk him on Facebook, but, when I heard on the news this morning that NASA was going to send a rocket crashing into the lunar surface, I had this funny feeling that somehow my old classmate Ted was working for the government.

And that they finally heard him.

I'm One of Them

It's official: I've joined the ranks of the mustachioed.

Granted, I'm growing it for The Pirates of Penzance, but that doesn't alter the fact that there's a Rip Van Winkle ferret, snoozing beneath my giant proboscis. It's no child-molester or Hitler mustache-- that would be more of a rat or a hamster. This bad boy is definitely a ferret, sweeping all the way down to my jaw-line.

Oh, I've also got huge fucking mutton chops, too.

The show doesn't open until just before Thanksgiving, so I'm going to look like this for a while. I was wearing a full beard up until last night, but I felt compelled to shave down to what I intend the Major-General to look like, so the director can tell me if she likes what I've done because, if she doesn't, I kind of have to start from the beginning.

I hope she likes it.

She should, because from photographs I've seen of other Major-Generals, both Gilbertian and real Civil War-era ones, I pretty much look the part. Except that, no matter how Victorian I style my facial hair, I still look like a big Jew, which most Major-Generals and Civil War generals didn't.

But I can't help that. Maybe our make-up artist can, but I have my big Jewish doubts.

Ever since college when I appeared as Deputy Governor Danforth in our regrettable and obligatory production of The Crucible, I've grown my own facial hair for roles when required. Sure, I could use the fake stuff, but anybody who's ever had fake staches and beards applied with spirit gum will understand when I evoke the hallowed phrase, "Never Again." Aside from the fact that that spirit gum shit is terribly painful and nearly impossible to get off, you spend the entirety of your time on-stage worrying that the false hair is going to fall off during a pivotal moment. I can remember appearing in a high school production of Kiss Me, Kate adorned with a fake mustache, and unconsciously touching it the whole time I was on-stage, just making sure it was still affixed. Not good.

And so, once I could grow my own, I reasoned, why the hell would I ever use fake facial hair again? It's like stuffing clementines in your shorts when you've got a 14-inch dong, a situation I have never needed to ponder in any realm save the hypothetical.

Of course, the bitch about real facial hair is that you can't just wear it to rehearsals and performances-- you're stuck with it. And your wife is stuck with it. Last night, upon returning home from her art class she saw me and exclaimed, "Oh, noooooo! You're going to look like THAT for my birthday pictures?!!!"

Oops.

They say that artists suffer for their art, but, at times like these I am reminded that their spouses invariably suffer more. Fortunately, I'm not a real, professional artist, so my wife will never have to suffer the indignities of having our electricity shut off, or me flying to L.A. sixty-eight times a year, or appearing in commercials for Preparation-H. She just has to put up with me looking like Ambrose Burnside for two months.

Fortunately, when we woke up this morning, she didn't look over at me and scream and, when she left for work, she gave me a kiss-- so I think it's all going to work out.

There is a definite anti-mustache sentiment in pop culture these days, or perhaps I should say "these centuries." Eyeglass shapes come and go with regularity, round to square to rectangle to round again-- waistlines go up and they go down, men's suit jackets haven't changed much in a hundred years, except when lapels got as big as airplane wings in the 1970s because everybody was on drugs, but the mustache hasn't been regarded as anything less than creepy since maybe 1910. They weren't seen practically at all in the 1700s-- can you imagine George Washington or Mozart in a broached 3/4-length coat, powdered perriwig, white stockings, buckled shoes.... and a mustache? They wouldn't have known what to do with them. Do we powder them? I mean, Christ, they put wigs over perfectly good hair-- would mustaches have required wigs, too? Talk about a dilemma.

Then, in the 1860s, there was a mustachioed turning point: we didn't trust a Civil War officer higher than the rank of colonel unless he had abundant fur sprouting out from some of the most dubious facial locations. I suppose, if you were going to lead men to their certain deaths, the thinking was: you'd goddamn well better look like a man yourself.

There's a great line in "The History Boys." A young, fresh-faced teacher is brought in to tutor a class of genius slackasses in preparation for their entrance exams and interviews at Oxford and Cambridge. The teacher has a brief tete-a-tete with the arrogant, priggish headmaster who looks him up and down and declares with dismay, "You're very young." He then ends the meeting with a stern piece of advice,

"Consider growing a mustache."

Later in the play, the headmaster explodes at the teacher for having spoken of the Holocaust in a controversial manner, in an attempt to get his boys to think past cliche. As the headmaster is about to stride out of the room, he glares at the teacher unhappily and says,

"Didn't I suggest that you grow a mustache?"

Of course, the headmaster in this play is stuck in an era where a mustache commanded respect and possibly reverence. Today, it incites ridicule and contempt, and it evokes strong negative responses in people, which I suppose I'll have to endure until the curtain comes down on Pirates.

But at least I don't have to look at it.

Thnx 4 Reading

Wht th hll s "thnx?"

I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but we Western society humans type beings like our words with the occasional vowel ensconsed somewhere in there, even if it dies of loneliness. If I get one more email from someone "thnxng" me for something, I think I'm going to key that non-word into my own face.

Don't get me wrong-- I like to be thanked, and I personally would even go so far as to say that I'm not thanked enough, but to be told "thnxs!" in an email is more of a slap on the titty than a genuine display of gratitude in my opinion.

Do I sound like a curmudgeonly, crinkly codger?

Good.

I don't want to be accused of being a sexist curmudgeonly, crinkly codger, but I've noticed, in my anecdotal way, that females are big offenders of the "thnx!" email sign off. I don't know what that is. Is there some sort of hormonal imbalance I'm not aware of that makes it uncomfortable for women of a certain vicissitude to utilize vowels and correct spelling? I was watching an episode of "COPS" where a young female suspect who was being arrested for aggravated battery on her boyfriend shouted, "You know how I am when I'm on my period!" to the arresting officers, her parents, and the rest of middle America. I think it's funny when women blame their periods for their irrational behavior.

Is that why women write "thnxs!" to me? Because they're menstruating? I kind of doubt it.

I could sit here and postulate until my bloggity little fingers fell off, trying to figure this one out. I could blame email culture and texting culture and overall declination of culture, the fact that handwriting is de-emphasized in school, the fact that nuns are no longer permitted to break the tender, pale, freckled knuckles of our nation's Catholic schoolchildren. I could blame Hitler, or the sodding cat, or The Steve Wilkos Show or the Chinese, but I don't really know what good that would do.

It's weird, because I like blaming people as much as anybody, I suppose. Remember that story about taking the axe to our basement wall when I was a kid, and I blamed my sister? I just don't feel like blaming anybody right now-- I guess my heart's just not in it.

I understand sometimes that people are in a hurry, and that writing detailed, long-winded, rhapsodic and prosaic emails just doesn't fit into everyone's PDA calendar, but, Jesus, people, "thank you" is just a little too important. We've truncated "Hello" to "Hi," and that's bad enough. When you thank someone, you're acknowledging that they've done something helpful for you, they've done you a motherfucking solid. Sure, they haven't chiseled your ugly mug on Mt. Rushmore or hand-built you a tool shed replica of the Taj Mahal in your back-yard, but they saved your ass on a PowerPoint presentation, or they made a phone call when you couldn't or they said they'd research what dishwasher performed the best on consumerreports.com and, Goddamnit, that deserves more than a trite, obnoxious, curt little "thnxs!"

In my book, a thank you is a pretty big deal. I like it when people say "thank you" and I'm pretty anal about remembering to say it myself. I know people don't have to do me favors or help me out or pay me a compliment, so, when they do, while I don't bust out a pinata and noisemakers, I make sure to look them in the eye and say "thank you" in a way that communicates to them that I mean it. That's hard to do in an email, but "thnxs!" is a sure-fire way to let someone know that you don't really give much of a damn about what they did for you, or about thank you's in general. I mean, it's about gratitude, people, and, if you're thankful, then express it properly.

Thnxs?!

G fck yrslf!

About Dog Shit

As I was sitting in front of the television last Thursday night, my eyeballs helplessly riveted to the images of Ken Burns' latest documentary about National Parks, I turned to my wife, who was standing on the fifth stair, in her pajamas and brushing her teeth and I said,

"You know, Ken Burns could make a documentary about dog shit and I'd watch it. As long as it had those sentimental close-ups with a slow pull back, narration by Kevin Conway, and laconic piano music by Jacqueline Schwab, I'd watch it."

She gently removed the toothbrush from her froth-covered mouth and said,

"Ah gnhow."

It's not that National Parks don't interest me-- they do-- but I don't think another documentarian could entice me to flit two hours of my life away learning about them. When I was a junior in high school, I took a snow day and plowed through the entirety of "The Civil War." I mean, this is a pretty big deal to a kid who was attaining the absolute zenith of self-pleasuring activities. We're talking three times a day on average, and on a snow day, only serious chafing or a dizzy spell would curtail those activities. So to supplant my zeal for touch-touch with unending VHS tapes about Antietam, Vicksburg and Bull Run, well, as documentarians go, you've gotta be worth your weight in crumpled tissues.

My statement, though, about Ken Burns and a documentary about dog shit got me thinking-- what inane thing could I write about in such a way that it would engage my average reader enough to follow the blog post through to the end? I mean, I've run you poor people through the goddamn mill on numerous occasions, and some of you are still here. That's kind of amazing to me, even after all this time.

As I was thinking, I started to get a little bold...

Could I get away with a blog post about dog shit?

Truly, I don't know exactly what I'd say. I mean, after six years of dog ownership, I guess I can say I'm pretty well acquainted with dog shit, though I have no doubt there are those who can claim more intimacy with said subject than I. My dog is currently eating a food that turns his shit green, which doesn't make picking up after him any better or worse, really. It is, interestingly enough, easier to see the green shit in the dark, so that's good. Picking up dog shit used to be a real drag when I lived in the city, and cadres of black kids on bicycles would laugh at me as I stooped down to pick up the crap, an Eckerd drugstore bag covering my hand like a lunch lady's hairnet. In the suburbs, elderly ladies in track pants coming home from an early morning run at the JCC congratulate and thank me for picking up my dog's shit.

I'm not particularly fond of either resposne.

My outside trashcan smells ferociously, and I'm not sure what, if anything, I'm supposed to do about it. I try to close the lid very securely after each deposit, and I double-knot all my poop-baggies, and yet, every time I open the lid, a thick avalanche of malodorous skunk-air fiercely train-rapes my nostrils. I hear trashmen make a pretty good living, but you couldn't pay me $600,000 a year to be present next to my open trash can for longer than two seconds once a week. I feel bad for the trashmen. I have no doubt that they hate me and dread coming down our alley to get our trash. When I was an EMT, there were certain patient names and certain addresses that I would just pray wouldn't show up on our radios during a shift of mine. Invariably, they did. The foul-mouthed black guy with a cholostomy bag and no legs, the filthy, skeleton-looking woman with a bacteria-infected trach, the 450-pound guy with the watermelon-sized tummy tumor. I know that, for the trashmen, I am watermelon tumor guy.

I've tried putting baking powder in the trash can, but it doesn't work. When I do that, it looks like a cocaine and shit dump, and it still stinks to Christ's ass. The trashmen are just going to think I spilled cocaine in there and they'll call the cops. Or start snorting, though they'd probably die from the stench first.

Did you know that there's services out there that will come to your yard and pick up your dog's shit for you? At least, there are where I live. Growing up, I never knew that I lived in a well-to-do neighborhood, but now that I'm older and I see vans that say, "Tired of Picking Up Your Dog's Poo? We'll Come to You!" I finally get it. Fortunately, we don't have a yard where we can let the dog shit freely, and, if we did, we'd pick it up ourselves.

Actually, come to think of it, we used to live in a house where the dog shat outside, and we pretty much just left it out there. It never smelled as bad as our trashcan does, and, in the winter, it didn't smell at all.

Sometimes, my father and mother take care of our dog when we go away on a little trip, like for the weekend or something. My father loves our dog, and while we're out hiking or on the beach, I'll get a typically awesome text message from my father that will read something like this:

"Finley is great! he made
three bum-bum golden
brown. beeutiful. i sent it
to the art museum for
exhibit. love dad."

I wonder what he'll say about Finley's shit now that it's green. Will it still be museum quality?

------------

Congratulations-- you have just read an entire blog post about dog shit. Can I have my Ken Burns money now?

Fearless Fifty-Three

There's a very sweet song in the musical "Wicked," a show I really like in spite of not being a twelve-year-old girl, and it's not a popular song either, like "Defying Gravity" or, well, "Popular." It's a one-minute ballad that the Wizard sings called "I am a Sentimental Man." Though I come off a bit bold and brash, I am a sentimental man, and if there's a number in the world I get all soft and squishy about, it's the number "53." Here's the reason why:

My heart belongs to that car, and that number. Ever since I can remember, and I can remember pretty far back, 53 has been my favorite number. It hasn't been especially lucky, and maybe it would be if I ever played the lottery, but it's always been my favorite. Don't ask me how, but I hit 53 followers this weekend, and so I thought, in honor of this historic event, I'd spend a little time talking about my favorite number, my favorite car, and my favorite Disney live-action movie.

By the way, my favorite animated Disney movie is "Robin Hood," and if you've ever heard me lustily belting out "A Pox on the Phony King of England," well, you know not to expect too much from me. Mentally, at least.

My obsession with Herbie (the Love Bug) started many, many years ago, when I was around three years old. My father's sister was visiting from Israel and my parents took the extraordinarily rare opportunity to have an evening to themselves, leaving Rena in charge of the kids. My sisters were off doing whatever sisters did in the heady days of 1983-- probably decorating their bedroom walls with puff paint or whatever-- and Rena plopped me on the living room floor and slipped a film into the Betamax. From the opening title sequence featuring a good old-fashioned dirt-track demolition race, underscored with a sprightly, jaunty soundtrack, I was hooked. And, when the delicate, ovoid, off-white beauty, emblazoned with its patriotic stripes, red, white and royal blue, just off-set of center and its bold number square on the hood, engine cover and doors, I was in love.

"One day," I announced to my Mommy & Daddy, "I'm going to have a car, just like that."

And I've owned a Bahama Blue 1966 Volkswagen Beetle DeLuxe Sedan, and a white, 2001 New Beetle, which I painstakingly turned into Herbie with a custom vinyl graphics kit, ordered from California. One day, I know I'll put the two experiences together and create a precisely, pristinely accurate Herbie the Love Bug replica, and I hope to never part with it, as I regrettably and regretfully did with my other two friends.

I sometimes think about who I'd be if Rena had chosen a different movie to pacify me that night, so long ago. So much of my life is so intrinsically wrapped up in Herbiedom. When I get bored in front of the computer screen, I don't turn to porn (well, sometimes I do) but I turn to ebaymotors, where I stare longingly at vintage Beetles for sale, seeing each one of them as a blank canvas for my Herbie fetish. $3,200 barn find in Boise. $12,000 black plate original in Sacramento. $575 project car in Detroit. $2,700 daily driver in Englewood. They're all calling to me like a siren. Come save me. Paint me. Love me.

I'd take them all if I only could. I'm like a fucking cat lady. Left to my own devices, we'd have Beetles in the garage, on the street, on the lawn, in the basement. I'd be hoarding them in the attic. When I see one on the side of the road, its floorboards rusted and its front bumper hanging down in a palsied frown, I look at it like a child that has been slapped in the face by its mother and left outside the Pathmark. I want to sweep in like BPS (Beetle Protective Services) and take these cars away from those who would let the milkweed grow around them and swallow them whole. But I can't support the habit.

My aunt Rena killed herself six years ago, and I can't see a Beetle or watch "The Love Bug" without thinking about her, at least in passing. That time when I was three or so was probably the longest amount of time I'd ever spent with her. She moved from Israel to Australia to New York City as she moved in and out of sanity. An aunt who hears voices in her head and does battle with demons in the night wouldn't have been much good to me, even if she was around regularly, but I'll always be grateful to her for the German wheels she set in motion that babysitting night so long ago.

And so I'll close this little entry by thanking my 53 followers. And I'll thank Aunt Rena, too, for giving me my favorite number.

Are You Sure You're a Reporter?

Despite what people say, print journalism isn't dead. Sometimes, though, I think maybe it should be, and then have its corpse violated.

Take, for instance, this "article" that appeared today in "The Philadelphia Inquirer," which is, supposedly, our fair city's high-brow newspaper. I've taken pains to bold the "appetizing" portions of the article:

Pizza-eating police nab three suspected thieves
By Kathleen Brady Shea
Inquirer Staff Writer

Hungry thieves in West Whiteland Township were no match for detectives with an appetite for crime prevention, police said yesterday.

Three township detectives were having lunch in the Peace-a-Pizza shop in the Main Street shopping center about 12:10 p.m. Tuesday when they noticed a woman peering into customers' purses, Sgt. Martin Malloy said.

Fearing that she might be seeking a different type of dough, the detectives - Sandy Smith, Kristin Lund, and Scott Pezick - followed her as she met up with two other women and drove to the other side of the shopping center, Malloy said.

Two of the women left the car and went into the Babies R Us store, while the third stayed in the car. The detectives split up and continued their surveillance, Malloy said.

Eventually, the women were questioned, and police said they learned the three were concealing $180 worth of merchandise with no receipts. Lakisha Mitchell, 22, of Newark, Del., and Violet Washington, 18, and Deneisha Wright, 20, both of Wilmington, were arrested for theft, receiving stolen property, and criminal conspiracy, Malloy said.

They are not the first alleged victims of the dining detectives, Malloy said.

In May 2007, Lund and Pezick were seated at the Cosi restaurant in the same shopping center when they noticed a woman using fancy footwork to move a nearby diner's purse that had been placed on the floor. They watched as the woman removed credit cards and cash before returning the handbag to its original location.

Her subsequent arrest might have given the detectives an insatiable craving for culinary crime-solving.

-------------------

I mean-- wow.

Now, let's be up front with each other here: I'm no journalist. I admit that. But, after reading this, I think you will agree that neither is Kathleen Brady Shea. I did take a journalism course in college, and the first thing we were taught by our instructor is,

"Always be asking yourself, 'is this news?'"

I think Kathleen Brady Shea might have forgotten to ask herself that question before she wrote this "tasty little piece."

If she did, in fact, ask herself that question and the answer she came up with was, "Yes, this is news," then this is how the story should have read:

"Three West Whiteland Township detectives arrested three Delware women on suspicion of theft, receiving stolen property, and criminal conspiracy."

That's a piece of news. The article that preceeded this was a piece of shit.

We in America have a long, deeply-entrenched tradition of thinking of cops as sitting on their fat asses eating. Think Norman Rockwell's "The Runaway." The hulking mass of cop in that picture looks like he's about to chow down on the boy's piece of pie. Thanks for the stereotype, Norm.

We get our bullshit ideas about the world from pop-culture-- depictions in TV and film, we're not supposed to get them from the newsmedia. It is the responsibility of journalists to present fact-based accounts of the news. Newsprint is not a medium for making fun or making light, or for presenting stories in a cutsey, tongue-in-cheek way littered with vomitrocious aphorisms. The thing is, we have three detectives who made a triple arrest, and they're being treated in a condescending, patronizing manner, calling them "Pizza-eating police" and "dining detectives," bringing to mind a 300 lb cop with melted mozzerella hanging out of his mouth.

Maybe Ms. Shea thinks she's still writing for her high school paper.

By the way, if anybody sits around on their asses eating all day, it's more likely to be writers, not cops.

Incidentally, Ms. Shea put her email address at the close of her little journalistic offering in case anybody has any comment they'd like to make about it or her writing.

It's kbrady@phillynews.com.

Why not drop her a line and let her know what you think?

I'm going to!

On the Death of a Failure

Charles S. Houston died on Sunday, and his obituary appears in the New York Times today. The headline proclaims, "Charles S. Houston, Who Led a Failed Himalayan Climb, Dies at 96."

I don't know why I was drawn to this particular piece of news this morning. Maybe I like failures. No, I definitely like failures. There's something endearing about them, there's something unique and yet definitely common-- we're all failures, and yet, some of us are spectacular failures.

There's the guys who disintigrate in space ships and the ones who try to save rapidly descending airplanes, the ones who blow themselves up inside chemistry labs and the ones who froze to death while trying to find the Northwest Passage. There's the people who never got published or got applause or thank you cards. The downtrodden, the vainglorious, the attempted, not the achieved.

I like these guys.

I like them, I suppose, because I see a lot of myself in them, though you'd never catch me in the fucking Himalayas unless I was some explorer's hostage or sex-slave. I picture their tombstones chiseled with the pharse, "Well... he tried." I like people who try, and I damn well like them better than the ones who succeed. The ones who try and fail aren't tripping over their own egos, and that probably makes them inifintely better company at a dinner party-- though the ones who succeed might have cooler stories.

Charles Houston, though, had some cool stories of his own, even for a loser.

In 1953, while he was 3,000 feet away from the summit of K-2, one of the members of his expedition developed clots in his veins. His team wasted no time in trying to save the sick teammate, gingerly taking him down the mountain when, without warning, five of them fell down a dangerous ledge, while they clung for dear life to a rope, making an arduous slow climb up. Miraculously, everyone survived. The five teammates left the injured man for a little while to set up camp and, when they returned to the spot where they'd left him, he was gone. Houston later theorized that the sick individual threw himself off the mountain, knowing he was going to die anyway, to save the lives of his colleagues.

Houston never climbed a mountain again, but he dedicated his life to the pursuit of greater understanding of the body's physiological response to altitude, creating the International Hypoxia Symposium. Before he began mountaineering, he was a navy surgeon in World War II.

Reinhold Messner, who is often cited as the greatest mountaineer of all time, said that Houston's 1953 expedition was the most honorable expedition on record. "They failed in the most beautiful way you can imagine."

To fail beautifully-- what better legacy can there be than that? The poet William Blake once wrote, "The most sublime act is to set another before you." That, of course, is what Charles S. Houston and his crew did on that day in 1953, and that, probably, is what the young man with the blood clots did in return to save the lives of his fellow climbers. Sacrifice, an inherent respect and admiration for the precious nature of life, this is what makes us beautiful failures, if we can be lucky enough to be complimented in such a fashion in our own lives, and our own deaths.

God save the failures, especially the beautiful ones.