So long to Jack & the Man in Black
Posted on September 12, 2003 at 6:44 am | No Comments
I wake this morning to find that Johnny Cash and John Ritter have both left us. Died within hours of each other. Hard to find two more completely diverse public figures, and today they’ll be tied together in their passings.
It’s unfortunate that the news stories of Ritter’s death will no doubt be overshadowed by coverage of Mr. Cash, but I admired them both.
John Ritter… been watching him since I was a little kid. When you’re eight years old, raised in no small part on television, and you see the preacher from the Waltons transform into Jack Tripper, you can’t help but be completely confused and eventually impressed. Can’t say the man had range. In every interview I saw or read of his, he struck me as one hell of a nice guy. As an eleven year old comic book fan, I especially loved him in Hero at Large as Captain Avenger. I lost track of him over the years, but it was a nice surprise to see him eventually show up on Buffy, and it’ll be cool to see him in his last role in Terry Zwigoff’s next film, Bad Santa.
What more can I say about Johnny Cash that others won’t say better today? I went through an obsessive Cash phase in college, treated him almost as a required course. An undeniable legend, hugely influential, a creative genius until his very last days. Respected by nearly everyone who’d heard him, and his recent priase at the MTV awards showed the generational and categorical boundaries the man broke.
Tough news to take this morning. So long, John & Johnny. Thanks for everything.
Reflecting on Nine Eleven
Posted on September 11, 2003 at 8:33 am | No Comments
Two years ago, at 8:55 am, I was pulling into a Newton, Mass. parking garage, listening to a breaking news report on NPR. Sketchy details report a plane just hit the WTC, but “no further details were available”. Knee-jerk assumption was a small plane, a single engine prop, a freak accident. Turn off the car, walk into work, check out the television in the game room.
Adam is already there, watching the live CNN feed. “Wow, looks like it was a pretty big plane”. “Damn, that’s a lot of smoke”. More co-workers gather, chatting, speculating, wondering. It’s 9:03. We watch the second plane hit. We all know what it means. Some can’t look away from the TV, others just look at each other.
The people at Turning Point Software (because that’s what it will always be called to me, not Meta-Vant-Whatever) were good friends, maybe the closest team of co-workers I’ll ever know, but that day gave us a connection that can’t be matched.
It’s 9:05 and I call Amie at home, tell her to turn on the TV. She can’t believe it. “What the hell’s going on?”
I jump on the net, hit my first surfing stop of every day, the Warren Ellis Forum on Delphi. Joe has already started a thread.
“Holy shit:”, “This is just horrifying”, “fucking unreal”, “Are we under attack?”, “I HEARD IT. I HEARD IT.”, “I could feel it shake.”, “Reports of an explosion at the Pentagon”, “We just lost the World Trade Center.”, “this is really scary.”, “MY BUILDING, WHERE I SHOULD BE RIGHT NOW, NO LONGER EXISTS.”, “Glad you’re alive.”, “I want to go home.”, “I am trembling as I write this.”, “All of our thoughts are with you.”, “I’m fucking numb.”, “What a terrible, terrible day.”
In that one-of-a-kind virtual hangout, I found real-time reaction, international perspective, first-hand accounts, paranoid speculation, blind anger, heartfelt concern, but most of all, a sort of long-distance communal connection. A new kind of comfort among strangers. I’ve never felt anything like that, and in retrospect, it was a pretty powerful source of hope of on such a dark, dark day.
Today I’ll be donating blood at Fenway Park (starts at 11am… if you’re in Boston, head on down), and this evening I’ll be getting together with my friends and former co-workers from Turning Point. We’ll be gathering, as we hopefully will every year on this day, at the restaurant across the street from our old building. Reflecting on the way things used to be, and appreciating what we have now.