I watched some good movies this week end. I was particularly intrigued by The Client.

This is a film set in the South and one can never go wrong with Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon reciting from a script taken from a Grisham novel. It was made in '94. I know cause Wiki told me. I would have thought it was five or six years old, but that is how my mind works.

This ten year-old boy, played by Brad Renfro, witnesses a murder of a Senator with some sort of mob connections and the mob goes after the minor.  The boy is accosted by the DA Tommy Lee for what he knows and so he runs to an attorney played by Sarandon.

I liked the film because it did away with the usual sexual tensions and it dealt with the issues that exist between the 'system' and the individual.  You can get a sense of the plot at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Client

I thought: this kid is good. So I look him up and find out he died two years ago from a heroin overdose.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xcwt9mSbYE

Twenty four years old. He had costarred with a woman who was nominated for an Academy Award for her part in this film.  He was terrific. He had EVERYTHING.

Then I thought about River Phoenix and Heath Ledger.

We, the older 'we', watched Jimmi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Keith Moon, Belushi and Janis and Mama Cass and all the rest of them give up the ghost. These young people with EVERYTHING ended up dead. Moon along with Mama and Belushi at least made it into their early thirties.  Oh there were suspicious circumstances for Jimmi and Brian of course.

Now I have not had access to any of these files you know. I do not pretend to know all of the intricacies of the deaths. I mean if there are risks with regards to guns and cars, there are certain risks with regards to drugs and their use.

This kind of hit me because of a blog by Acamus. Who else? The fucking existentialist in our midst.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCZpI5q-5vA

He is doing a nice series called: The Play's the Thing. And he references Spalding Gray and one of his performances.

Mark Russell was a fan for chrissakes and Wiki gives me this wonderful quote from Gray:

I would say that my major problem with Hollywood is this -- I sometimes paraphrase Bob Dylan -- Bob Dylan says 'I may look like Robert Frost, but I feel just like Jesse James.' I say 'I may look like a gynecologist, an American ambassador's aide, or a lawyer, but I feel like Woody Allen.' ...

"My insides are not what my outsides are. I'm not who I appear to be. I appear to be a Wasp Brahmin, but I'm really a sort of neurotic, perverse New York Jew. When I was performing one year ago at this time in Israel, a review came out in Hebrew about Monster in a Box, and it read, 'Spalding Gray is funny, sometimes hilarious, wonderfully neurotic for a non-Jew.' Only the Jews can say something like 'wonderfully neurotic.'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oqAU5VxFWs

This is just delightful for me, and from what I gather, for many members of my generation to some extent. In 2004 he was cruising in Ireland and was involved in a car accident that left him sick, sore and disabled. He called it quits, by evidently, jumping into the East River.

I never had the opportunity like Camus to see Gray on stage, but I did have the opportunity several times to see his art performed on the telly.

Again, I do not have the file. The guy was 62 years old. It appears that he called it quits.

We read of Socrates. We do not have the opportunity to read anything he wrote. Supposedly Plato quotes him rather well for his own purposes. And we know Socrates was a famous figure by the time of his suicide because Aristophanes makes fun of him. Hahahaha

Oh, Socrates was forced to commit suicide you say. Hell, he was offered formal exile; a rather honorable escape in those days as well as for centuries thereafter. I mean Aristotle, the most famous student of Socrates' most famous student, headed for hills when he saw the City Fathers coming after him without any formal writ of exile. I mean, Aristotle simply fled Athens like the plague.

He ended up picking up some cash from Alexander as a tutor. I guess you could not get that much from residuals in those days.

Anyway, I go back to this kid, this 24 year old kid who would receive residuals for years from his gig when he was ten.  At twelve he is working with Brad Pitt and De Nero in Sleepers. He was able to do a couple more big films and he even would show up with that nut/genius D'Onofrio in Law & Order Criminal Intent.

And you know, I mean you know deep down inside, that if he had called Susan or Tommy Lee for help...they would have taken his call.  His death was ruled an overdose. 

Yogi Berra said:

When you come to a fork in the road....TAKE IT.

I wonder, did Brad Renfro just take it?

I have friends here just attempting to get by; unemployed with little prospects; working every day on line, and filing resumes; attempting to make contact with the powers that be.

HERE I AM AND THIS IS WHAT I CAN DO FOR YOU!!!

I have a couple of friends attempting, struggling, doing all that is necessary to stay alive. They have severe illnesses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzReSBaben8

One of them, who has related his experiences in some posts on Cafe, has been fighting cancer for the better part of a year. I mean the pain is in the extreme due to back surgery and the disease. It is one thing after another. And he just keeps on keeping on and he will never give up. I am just amazed by this guy. Oh he fell into a support system; he has family and a fine woman available to him at any one moment.

What the hell keeps them going?

I have another buddy here who has faced death; looked the son of a bitch right in the teeth. Survived and lives on nothing really...a little social security.  He told me the other day that he just loves the idea of reading a book and checking out the newsblogs and explains that he is quite content. He does have a good woman though. When he is not tongue in cheek, he is quite happy with her.

He never really bitches. He told me the other day a couple friends in real trouble showed up at his door and he just gave them all he had; no questions asked.

I have many friends here who do so much for other people.

Stilli was just ecstatic one day. She told me she had just taught her 4 year old granddaughter how to read. I mean you would have thought she had won the lottery. And the other day she pretended to complain that that same little girl, now five, makes all these demands upon her. Hahahaha

TheraP, whom I miss very much, was always and is always involved. She has recounted her weekly sessions at a local hospice giving free therapeutic sessions to those without proper insurance.

And so many others at Café are involved. I mean they are writing Congress and writing their city council and working on projects for their community every single day.

Personally, I feel I keep waking up for two reasons.

I am a coward. I do not wish to die. Why I am afraid I am not sure.

The second thing that seems to keep me going is pure ire. I mean I read some recent racist drivel from rush or rover or I hear some silly diatribe by a repub pundit questioning My President's origin of birth and I go nuts.

Maybe it is the anger that keeps me going. That and my lack of access to heroin I suppose.

I really do not know the purpose or conclusion to this post.

Bwak caught me in my tracks the other day. She quoted M. Twain:

A rumor can travel half way across the globe by the time the truth gets its shoes on.

Or something like that. Bwak is an editor and fixes up books before they are published so she had it down correctly.

I really got nothin'.

Except when you come to a fork in the road...

Think about it first.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acxnmaVTlZA