Bruce Hornsby's Encore

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An old friend gave me a cassette tape of the first CD from Bruce Hornsby and the Range, and I thoroughly enjoyed it — so much that, in fact, after "Scenes From the Southside" hit the music stores on this day in 1988, I bought it without hearing a single track from it.

I was rewarded handsomely. I believed then — and I still believe — that it was better than that first album.

Actually, I guess that is a little misleading. I didn't purchase the album the day it came out. That came a couple of months later.

But it is true that I hadn't heard any tracks from the album before I bought it, not even on the radio. I saw it on display racks whenever I went to stores where records were sold — and the desire for it grew.

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If I had to pick a favorite, it would probably be "Look Out Any Window," but that was probably more because of the circumstances.

As I have written here before, "Scenes From the Southside" was the album I listened to the most after I moved from Arkansas, where I had spent most of my life, to Texas, where I enrolled in graduate school. I was eagerly anticipating that experience, but my thoughts were preoccupied with the friends I had left behind.

I was also preoccupied with thoughts of a girl with whom I was infatuated. She was a waitress in a Little Rock restaurant, and "Till the Dreaming's Done" always made me think of her.

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I saw relevance in each song to my life in those days. I had many dreams, and there were many lessons to be learned, both in and out of the classroom. I believed my future held great things for me.

I'm still waiting for the great things I thought would come — and may never come — but, in the words of another song from "Scenes From the Southside," the show goes on.

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There may yet be great things in store for me.

But as I look back, I know that there have already been some great things in my life. They may not have been what I expected or hoped for, but hasn't it been your experience that they seldom are?

A Tangled Web

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Marquise de Merteuil (Glenn Close): One does not applaud the tenor for clearing his throat.

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On this day 25 years ago, I was finishing up my first semester of graduate school. I had completed my final exams, and I was looking for something special to do to celebrate.

"Dangerous Liaisons," with John Malkovich, Glenn Close and Michelle Pfeiffer, was making its premiere 25 years ago today. It was a Friday, and I decided to go to the theater on Monday. (I worked for a mostly afternoon paper in those days, and my days off were Sunday and Monday. I spent Sundays watching football with my father so Monday seemed like the best time.)

There wasn't much of a crowd the day I saw it — which was kind of surprising. It was a week before Christmas, and schools were out. The malls were busy, and I would have figured that some people would have taken a couple of hours to watch a movie.

But, if they did, they were watching something else.

That was OK with me, though, because I didn't have to struggle to hear the dialogue, which crackled in a way that movie scripts seldom do. Maybe that's because it was based on an 18th–century novel — which may have been the reason moviegoers were scared off. If so, that was a shame because they missed out on an entertaining movie experience.

"Dangerous Liaisons" earned back more than twice what was spent to make it, and there were those who regarded that as a success, but its box–office take was exceeded by dozens of other movies that were released that year.

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Vicomte de Valmont (John Malkovich): Now, I think we might begin with one or two Latin terms.

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It had a kind of "Midsummer Night's Dream" quality to it.

The acting was first rate. Glenn Close played a member of the French nobility who had a virtuous reputation but was, in reality, a scheming and manipulative woman. She decided to have her revenge on a former lover by having his fiancee (Uma Thurman) seduced by another man, thus humiliating the former lover, and the instrument of the seduction would be an equally manipulative character played by John Malkovich.

Well, that was the plan.

The conflict for Malkovich's character was that he was already otherwise occupied with trying to seduce a chaste character played by Michelle Pfeiffer, who was staying with Malkovich's aunt (Mildred Natwick in her final role). But he changed his mind when he learned that Pfeiffer had been warned about him by the mother of Thurman's character (Swoosie Kurtz), and he turned his attention to Thurman.

Thurman's character, incidentally, had fallen in love with her music teacher (Keanu Reeves) who was not, in Kurtz's eyes, suitable for her daughter.

It's all kind of complicated to explain in print. It's much easier to follow when one watches the movie.

It is interesting, in hindsight, to contemplate what might have been. Drew Barrymore and Sarah Jessica Parker could have had the part that eventually went to Thurman. I find it hard to imagine either of those actresses bringing the freshness and naivete that Thurman brought to the role.

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At the Oscars, Close and Pfeiffer were nominated for awards but lost. The movie was nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Score but lost those as well. It won for adapted screenplay, costume design and art direction.

Malkovich and director Stephen Frears were not nominated.

On the subject of the music, I was gratified by the soundtrack, which included compositions from a virtual who's who of baroque and classical composers — Bach, Handel, Vivaldi — but, interestingly, even though the story took place in France, no music by French composers was heard.

Cinematic Sleight of Hand

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"I think it's time she met ... ze prince."

Michael Caine ("Dirty Rotten Scoundrels")

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Most of humanity, I suppose, falls into one of two categories — those who are naive and trusting and those who take advantage of the ones who are naive and trusting.

I believe there are degrees of both of these conditions. No one is either all bad or all good. Well, maybe a few are, but not many.

Most of the folks who are naive and trusting do manage to balance those tendencies with a healthy share of skepticism, but there are some who, like Charlie Brown, will always try to kick the football, knowing full well that Lucy will pull it away at the last minute.

And, while most of the people who take advantage of others don't do so routinely and often feel guilty when they do, there are the Lucys of the world who seize upon such opportunities virtually as a reflex action — and with no more remorse than one typically shows when swatting flies.

"Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," which premiered 25 years ago today, was about the extremes.

There was the ongoing struggle for local supremacy between two con artists, the urbane con man Michael Caine and the arrogant and a bit rough–around–the–edges hustler played by Steve Martin. In the seemingly gullible category was Glenne Headly, ostensibly a prize winner on a once–in–a–lifetime international vacation — set against the backdrop of the French Riviera, which did lend it a kind of "To Catch a Thief" aura.

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But Cary Grant and Grace Kelly were never as funny.

For awhile, Caine was cast as a teacher, guiding Martin in the subtle ways of sophisticated con artistry. But he struck out on his own when he realized that Caine and the rest of his merry band were benefiting while he was doing all the work and receiving none of the profits from it.

That was a conclusion that wasn't hard to reach. His performances as, primarily, Ruprecht (the mentally challenged "Monkey Boy," as Martin sneeringly called the character) were intended to frighten off the wealthy marks that Caine targeted once their money had been taken; after that mission was accomplished, the money was divided between Caine and his associates. Martin received nothing — but knowledge.

There was a third unseen con artist known only as "the Jackal." The Jackal was said to have been preying on wealthy folks in the area. He was regarded, to put it mildly, as unwelcome competition.

Initially, Caine mistook Martin for the Jackal. That was why Caine tried to scare Martin away from his corner of the Riviera, and he was briefly successful.

But it eventually occurred to Caine that there simply wasn't enough room in his corner of the Riviera for both of them so the two of them devised a bet. The first to con Headly (believed to be a wealthy heiress) out of $50,000 could stay. The other had to leave permanently.

And the race was on.

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Near the end of the movie, the con artists discovered that Headly was really the Jackal — after she had conned the two of them — and, most likely, the rest of the audience. It was probably the best sleight of hand I've seen at the movies since "The Sting."

It was neatly done.

Dramatizing the Stories of History

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Anderson (Gene Hackman): You know, if I were a Negro, I'd probably think the same way they do.

Ward (Willem Dafoe): If you were a Negro, nobody would give a damn what you thought.

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I grew up on what might be considered the fringes of Ground Zero in the civil rights movement.

I grew up in Arkansas, which was not where the era's most violent episodes occurred — but it was near by.

There were still racial issues in Arkansas when I was a child, even though it had been many years since the integration crisis at Little Rock's Central High drew the attention of the nation. That got ugly at times, but never (to my knowledge) deadly.

But as far as Mississippi was concerned, Arkansas might have been in the next hemisphere in those days rather than just across the river. People were dying in Mississippi. They were lynched or shot — or otherwise killed in a variety of creative ways.

Perhaps the most notorious such case during the civil rights era was the killing of three civil rights workers, two (both white) from "up north" and one (black) from Mississippi, who were abducted and murdered in 1964 while preparing for Freedom Summer.

Set against that backdrop was "Mississippi Burning," a largely fictional account of that time that premiered on this date 25 years ago.

In "Mississippi Burning," there were three missing civil rights workers, and the stories shared certain similarities, but the case that was described in "Mississippi Burning" was not a literal re–telling of the story from 1964.

To borrow a line from "Absence of Malice," it wasn't true — but it was accurate. It told a story that was all too common in the South in those days. Even when the fact that it was seen through the lens of the late 20th century was accounted for, the federal agents were more heroic and principled than many of their real–life counterparts.

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Anderson: You know, when I was a little boy, there was an old Negro farmer lived down the road from us name of Monroe. And he was, well, I guess he was just a little luckier than my daddy was. He bought himself a mule. That was a big deal around that town. Now, my daddy hated that mule, 'cause his friends were always kiddin' him about oh, they saw Monroe out plowin' with his new mule, and Monroe was gonna rent another field now that he had a mule. And one morning that mule just showed up dead. They poisoned the water. And after that there was never any mention about that mule around my daddy. It just never came up. So one time, we were drivin' down the road and we passed Monroe's place and we saw it was empty. He'd just packed up and left, I guess. Gone up North, or somethin'. I looked over at my daddy's face — and I knew he'd done it. And he saw that I knew. He was ashamed. I guess he was ashamed. He looked at me and he said: 'If you ain't better than a nigger, son, who are you better than?' He was an old man just so full of hate that he didn't know that bein' poor was what was killin' him.

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Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe played the FBI agents dispatched to Mississippi to investigate the disappearances, but they had certain obstacles to overcome. The two had different backgrounds — Dafoe's character was from the North, Hackman's was from the South. Hackman was older; Dafoe was younger. Dafoe was idealistic and didn't really understand the culture; Hackman did understand the culture.

But understanding the culture was only part of the challenge. The rest of it was getting people to trust enough to talk. The blacks were reluctant to talk for fear of retribution from the white power structure, which was intimately involved with the Ku Klux Klan. The whites wouldn't talk because to talk would mean to implicate their friends and associates — and invite violence against themselves and their families.

It was an ugly chapter in American history, to be sure, and the movie about it sparked some pretty ugly moments when it was released. I guess the subject matter stirred up some dormant issues — or perhaps not–so–dormant ones that had been suppressed — often (perhaps unintentionally) by the very people who sought to shed light on them.

At the time, I remember some complaints from people who felt the movie should have been more accurate about the historical event that inspired it. The most famous example probably was a review in TIME magazine that called the movie a "cinematic lynching" of the facts — but the movie's director, Alan Parker, frequently reminded moviegoers at the time that it was a dramatization, not a documentary.

I understood Parker's position, but I felt at the time — and I still feel — he did a disservice to the truth.

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Given some of the images Parker used (like the above image of clearly separate water fountains that were provided for whites and blacks), viewers could be forgiven for not always being able to tell the difference between dramatization and documentary.

But everyone knew what inspired the movie. Only the names had been changed, really — well, and some of the details were different, too. The name of the county where the real murders took place was Neshoba County; in the movie, it was Jessup County (to my knowledge, there is no Jessup County anywhere in the United States, let alone Mississippi).

The movie got plenty of recognition. I was particularly pleased that Frances McDormand was nominated for an Oscar for her performance as the deputy's wife who was severely beaten for giving information on the bodies' whereabouts to the agents. She sometimes gets a bum rap, I think. Depending upon the role she has played and where that character lived, audiences have often mistaken her for the character.

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That's an indication of how talented she is, I guess, and her talent was rewarded by the Oscars eight years later when she appeared in "Fargo." But she didn't win an Oscar for "Mississippi Burning."

Hackman, who has a problem similar to McDormand's, was nominated for Best Actor. Parker was nominated for Best Director. The movie was nominated for Best Picture. None of the nominations "Mississippi Burning" received led to a victory.

In a memorable moment, Hackman's character took the place of the barber while the deputy (Brad Dourif) was in the chair getting a shave. He proceeded to beat him. I'm not sure how accurate that was. My memory of that time (and I was quite young in the '60s) is that there were not many federal agents who were prepared to do that kind of thing in a Southern town.

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"Make no mistake about it, Deputy. I'll cut your fucking head clean off and not give a shit how it reads in the report sheet!"

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The murders of the civil rights workers in Mississippi was an important story in the history of the American civil rights movement, and it deserved a lot more movie attention than it had received by the time "Mississippi Burning" made it to the theaters. Only one TV movie of which I am aware dealt with the subject — more than 10 years after the killings — before that time, and only one has made the theatrical rounds since.

But they are always fictional accounts, never a complete re–telling of what happened. The people who make those movies, in addition to being few and far between, seem to be caught betwixt and between their determination to tell the truth — and, at the same time, not tell too much of it.

The lessons of history are never served when the facts are altered.

A Reminder to Make the Most of the 'Living Years'

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"Say it loud, say it clear.
You can listen as well as you hear.
It's too late when we die
To admit we don't see eye to eye."

Mike and the Mechanics

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I've never been a Mike and the Mechanics fan.

That sounds as if I don't like their music, and that isn't true. I always enjoy listening to their songs when they come on the radio. I've just never bought one of their albums or CDs.

On this day 25 years ago, I was about two–thirds of the way through my first semester of graduate school. I was also working full time for an afternoon newspaper.

I was busy, too busy to keep up with the latest music releases.

But I heard Mike and the Mechanics' hit from their second album, which was released 25 years ago today — "Living Years" — and spawned the hit song by the same name.

I have always felt that "Living Years" the song was so successful because it was so honest. And I am more convinced of that today than I was then. You see, even though I had experienced personal losses — several of them, in fact — by that time in my life, I guess I still felt that, somehow, I (and the people who were important to me) would go on indefinitely.

Of course, I know that isn't true. Maybe, deep down, I knew it then but wouldn't admit it, but I will admit it now. I don't know what happens when we die, but I do know it is something everyone will do. I can't prove that I am going to die. I just know that I will.

I think I can handle the knowledge that I will die. I guess I'm still not sure how I feel about the deaths of people who are important to me. Maybe that is because I have lost too many without telling them things I wanted to tell them. If I have any real regrets, that is it.

That is why "Living Years" speaks so powerfully to me today. Even now, I find that song as moving as I did when I first heard it — perhaps even moreso because I have endured personal losses since the song was released that have a great deal of relevance.

I can't say that I know much about the album "Living Years" because I've never listened to it. I heard the title song many times back when it was on the radio, and I liked it. At that time, I really didn't think much about the message — at least in personal terms.

But it took on a whole new meaning for me after my mother was killed in a flash flood nearly seven years later. There have been other losses for me in the last quarter of a century, but that is probably the greatest.

I guess it is only human for people to have issues with their parents. Sometimes those issues are really significant; other times not so much.

And most of the time, people die before those issues are addressed. That can scar those who are left behind. I know.

It is probably the rare individual who can say that, when his/her parents died, he/she had resolved all their unspoken issues and the air between them had been cleared. In my own case, there probably weren't any major issues lingering between Mom and me. There were just things I wanted to say to her, things that would have made it easier for me to say goodbye and deal with her death.

I'm sure my mother knew all the things I wanted to tell her. I just didn't say them. I guess I always figured there would be time.

I don't know if I have ever told anyone this, but the main reason — if not the only one — that I decided to enroll in graduate school was because it was what my mother wanted for me. I have been thankful for my master's degree many times and for many reasons over the years, but the truth is that I probably wouldn't have pursued it if not for her. I probably would have been content to stay where I was and continue to do what I was doing.

I suppose that, no matter how old one is when it happens, it is a painful experience to lose your mother. I remember what Sports Illustrated's Peter King wrote after the death of his own mother (although not word for word). He said something to the effect of: "No matter how old you are when it happens, it feels strange to be a motherless child."

Of course, "Living Years" was about the relationship between a son and his father. But its message really applied to any close relationship that ends with no warning, and that message is worth repeating any time.

An old friend of mine, who lost his father when he was 12, reminded me of this song on Father's Day this year — the ideal day to mention it and just in time to mark the 25th anniversary of its release.

I recall when my friend and I were teenagers, seniors in high school. For awhile, he insisted he would not go through our high school graduation ceremony because his father was not alive to share it with him.

We talked about it, and he eventually decided to go through the graduation ceremony. I don't know if anything I said persuaded him, but I was glad he chose to do that. His mother was still living at the time, and I remember telling him that it would mean a lot to her.

I don't know if that influenced his decision. He's never mentioned it to me. I guess I have always believed that it did.

Regardless, there was one time a few years after our graduation when my friend's mother and I were alone together, just sitting in her living room and chatting about old times. I made what was, for me, an offhand remark about one of our classmates and something that happened during the graduation ceremony. It was a very ordinary kind of thing, or so I thought.

Originally, our high school graduation was scheduled for the football field, but it rained the morning of the ceremony, and the whole thing was very nearly moved into the gymnasium. The school board — or whoever it was who made the decision — waited until practically the last minute before declaring that things would proceed as planned.

The chairs, which had been put in position the day before, had been dried off, but nothing could be done about the surface of the football field, which was soft and wet. One of the classmates ahead of me was wearing shoes that really soaked up water, and I told my friend's mother that this classmate made a rather loud squishing sound as he walked across the stage to accept his diploma.

I laughed, and she smiled, but I thought I could see her eyes glistening at the mention of the graduation ceremony. I know she wasn't getting choked up about my classmate's soggy shoes.

I think it meant something to her that my friend went through graduation — maybe she knew somehow that he had been thinking about skipping it — and I'm glad he decided to participate in it after all.

I only live a few miles from my own mother's grave. Sometimes — and for a variety of reasons — I feel the need to visit it. Often when I do, I speak to her — almost as if she could hear me. It seems like a natural thing to do. When she was alive, she was the one I turned to for advice when I faced difficulties in life, and I speak to her now the way we once spoke to my grandmother when she was in dementia's grip.

I'm not really religious. I've gone through phases in my life in which I sought the answers — hasn't everyone? — but, when you get right down to it, I don't really think that my mother can hear me when I speak in the cemetery. Why do I do it then? I don't really know.

Maybe it's because there's a part of me — probably a very small part but a part, nonetheless — that concedes that there is a possibility that there is an afterlife.

And maybe it's because there are still things I wish I had said to her in her living years.

When Hollywood Acknowledged Rape

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Sarah Tobias (Jodie Foster): You don't understand how I feel! I'm standing there with my pants down and my crotch hung out for the world to see, and three guys are sticking it to me, a bunch of other guys are yelling and clapping, and you're standing there telling me that that's the best you can do. Well, if that's the best you could do, then your best sucks!

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Thirty years ago, in 1983, the story of a woman who was raped repeatedly by a group of men while others looked on and cheered in a Massachusetts bar made national headlines.

I guess it was around that time that the pendulum on attitudes about rape in this country began to swing in a different direction. Before 1983, the prevailing attitude held that a woman brought such an attack on herself through her behavior and/or what she was wearing. (Actually, that continued to be the prevailing attitude after 1983, too — and, in some places, it remains the prevailing attitude, but not as many.)

It took five years, but the Massachusetts case forced Hollywood to deal with rape in a more direct manner than it ever really had before. Hence, "The Accused" premiered on this day in 1988. It wasn't a literal history of the 1983 case. Rather, it was a fictionalized account — and it was a story that, by 1988, movie audiences were ready to see.

Jodie Foster starred as the victim of a gang rape. The story that emerged was one of a young woman who had argued with her boyfriend, dressed provocatively, took some drugs and danced and flirted in a bar. This was the justification for three men raping her on a pinball machine (in real life, as I recall, it was a pool table).

The attorney who was assigned to the case (Kelly McGillis) wasn't happy about the assignment and wanted to drop it. Eventually, she entered a plea bargain that called for the rapists to serve some jail time for "reckless endangerment" — her thinking was that a defense attorney could use Foster's history against her and wind up getting all the attackers acquitted of a rape charge — but it wasn't enough for Foster's character, who felt cheated of the opportunity to tell her story in court.

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At that point, Foster's character began to really engage in some reckless behavior. She plowed into a pickup truck — turned out the driver was one of the witnesses to the rape, and he propositioned her. She wound up in the hospital because of the collision, but she came out of it determined to bring charges against her rapists and those who had encouraged them.

And she persuaded McGillis' character to pursue justice with her.

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"Mr. Paulsen has told you that the testimony of Sarah Tobias is nothing. Sarah Tobias was raped, but that is nothing. She was cut and bruised and terrorized, but that is nothing. All of it happened in front of a howling crowd, and that is nothing. Well, it may be nothing to Mr. Paulsen, but it is not nothing to Sarah Tobias, and I don't believe it is nothing to you. Next, Mr. Paulsen tried to convince you that Kenneth Joyce was the only one in that room who knew that Sarah Tobias was being raped — the only one!

"Now you watched Kenneth Joyce. How did he strike you? Did he seem especially sensitive, especially observant? Did he seem so remarkable that you said to yourselves, 'Of course! This man would notice things other people wouldn't.' Do you believe that Kenneth Joyce saw something in that room that those three men didn't see?"

Kathryn Murphy (Kelly McGillis)

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So McGillis brought charges of "criminal solicitation" against the witnesses who had cheered and encouraged the assault. It was a clever ploy, reminiscent of cases in the 1960s when murder charges weren't likely to succeed in most Deep South jurisdictions, and the best strategy for federal litigators was to charge participants with civil rights violations.

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Kathryn Murphy: Listen again ... "A person is guilty of criminal solicitation if he commands, induces, entreats or otherwise persuades another person to commit a felony ..."

Paul Rudolph (Carmen Argenziano): You can read it to me until you're blue in the face, I am not gonna let you prosecute a bunch of spectators ...

Kathryn Murphy: They're not spectators. They solicited the rape.

Paul Rudolph: Do you really want to ask a jury to lock up a bunch of people for clapping and cheering?

Kathryn Murphy: Clapping? Cheering? Pushing? Goading? Getting the rape going and keeping it going!

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Nearly two years ago, I wrote about a 1982 movie called "The Seduction," and the marketing of that movie tells you everything you really need to know about attitudes toward sexual assault and stalking roughly six years before "The Accused" hit the theaters.

I don't think anyone was killed in "The Seduction," but stalking was a prominent theme — even though I don't think the term was in use at that time — and implied in it was the threat of violence, even death. It was billed as an "erotic thriller," which is ironic, given that most women who have been stalked would say there was nothing erotic about it.

The same thinking has been applied to rape for generations. Truly awful behavior by men has been enabled by others who said the victim asked for it, or something similar. That attitude clearly influenced the initial treatment of Sarah Tobias' case in "The Accused." She had a checkered past, and the prosecution chose to pursue reckless endangerment instead of sexual assault in large part because of concern that the defense would pick away at her history, resulting, as I say, in acquittals.

Unfortunately, that probably was a realistic treatment of the deals that lawyers made all the time in those days. I covered the police and court beats for awhile, and I saw my share of deals being made. I knew what motivated lawyers then, and I am sure it motivates them now — the desire to win or, at least, to not lose or be perceived as having lost.

I could understand when I covered the police and the courts how ordinary people, unaccustomed to dealing with the legal system, could be confused, angry and frustrated by the routine maneuverings. And Sarah Tobias was frustrated when McGillis struck a deal to make sure the defendants would get some jail time. To McGillis, it was a victory to get something instead of nothing.

But it was obviously more than that to Sarah Tobias. She had been violated multiple times in front of a room full of strangers. She wanted a jury to hear her story, to know what she had suffered and to impose what she believed was an appropriate sentence.

I thought the movie was well done, and Foster won a much–deserved Best Actress Oscar for her performance. More than that, I thought "The Accused" was one of those significant movies that actually has an influence on cultural attitudes.

It made an important contribution to our growth as a nation.

On the Road With U2

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On this day 25 years ago, U2 released its "Rattle and Hum" record, the double album soundtrack for the movie by the same name — which wasn't released in the United States until the next month.

Critics were mixed in their reactions, but the album was quite successful, and, as far as I was concerned, there was no secret behind its success. U2 was a rising force in popular music at that time, and its power was best observed when it fed from the energy of the live audience.

The original concept was to document U2's tour of the United States in 1987. As a result, songs that were recorded in the last 25 years are not to be found on the album or in the movie.

But many of their best songs are to be found on it — like "Desire," "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," and "Pride (In the Name of Love)" — along with cover versions of songs like "Helter Skelter" and "All Along the Watchtower" and a duet with B.B. King that produced a smash hit, "When Love Comes to Town."

It became one of my favorite albums when I bought it.

But my favorite track on the album probably received little airplay when the album was released. "Bullet the Blue Sky" may have been a little too long for most radio stations, at 5:37, and it was never released as a single, anyway. For a disc jockey to play it, the DJ had to know it was there and play it directly from the album.

In my experience, most DJs did not know it was there. I discovered it when I got the album.

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For several years, I worked with a young man who was a devoted U2 follower. He had all their albums on CD — and, I confess, I copied some tracks from him.

I've still got 'em, and I listen to 'em from time to time.

And I have a CD of "Rattle and Hum" that I play frequently. Not all the way through. Just certain tracks.

I always listen to "Bullet the Blue Sky," and I often listen to "God Part II," which was something of a sequel to John Lennon's "God" and refers to another Lennon song, "Instant Karma," in its lyrics.

(Yesterday, by the way, would have been Lennon's 73rd birthday. I always wondered if that figured in the timing of the album's release, given the regard that Bono and the rest of the band have for Lennon.)

After All, Jesus Was Only (Part) Mortal, Right?

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Looking back on things, I would have to say that 1988 was a truly transitional year.

It certainly was for me, anyway.

In July of that year, I gave my two weeks' notice to the newspaper where I had been working since 1984 (I had been reading it since I was old enough to read). In August, I moved to Texas to enroll in graduate school, which I did later that month.

I don't recall specifically what I was doing on this day in 1988. I only know that I must have been very busy with my school work — among other things. The fall of 1988 was a hectic time in my life, adjusting to a new home and a new job — and being in the classroom again.

It's safe to say I wasn't going to the movies very much. In fact, I probably didn't go to the movies at all in that first semester of graduate school.

Anyway, I know I didn't go see "The Last Temptation of Christ" when it made its theatrical debut 25 years ago today. The first time I saw it was awhile later, when it was being shown on TV, and I'm sure I would have been more impressed had I seen it on the big screen, but I didn't.

I did, however, hear of the over–the–top responses from those who are charitably called the Christian right.

The fact that Jesus' final days were chronicled on film wasn't new. That's been done before. And anyone who has had any exposure to Christianity — and I was raised in a Protestant home in which the patriarch, like his father before him, was a religion and philosophy professor — knows the story of the crucifixion.

Apparently, it was an unusually painful and brutal way for a person to die. Early film depictions weren't as graphic as, say, Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ," but they got the point across well enough.

And "The Last Temptation of Christ" pulled no punches when it sought to show how brutal the practice of crucifixion was. But that was not what troubled the faithful so.

Allegedly, it was the introduction of that old bugaboo — sex — that enraged them. Movies had never before featured a Jesus on the cross hallucinating about having sex.

Jesus' partner in his hallucination was no stranger to Christians. She was Mary Magdalene (Barbara Hershey), a close friend of Jesus (Willem Dafoe) whom the Gospels tell us was there in his final days, witnessed his death, remained by his side even when his disciples had all fled and was either the first or one of the first to see Jesus after the Resurrection.

An account of Jesus' death would be as incomplete without her as it would be without Judas.

And it wouldn't have been inconceivable for Christians of the late 1980s to accept the idea of a sexually active Mary Magdalene.

For centuries, Mary Magdalene was confused with another Mary mentioned in the Gospels. The other Mary was said to be "a sinful woman," a prostitute; consequently, Mary Magdalene long was thought to be a prostitute.

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That idea was discredited by the Vatican in 1969, but the public image lived on two decades later; thus, the cinematic notion that Jesus' thoughts, in his final conscious moments, were of a sinful woman was offensive to believers who held that Jesus was free of sin.

Well, that was the story.

The truth was that the novel on which the movie was based had been a source of controversy ever since it was published nearly 30 years earlier. And sex was a convenient scapegoat for the temptation of the mortal side of Jesus.

But I have long believed that the exceptionally negative reaction to the movie and the book on which it was based had more to do with its general challenge to deeply held beliefs that really went beyond sex.

That is the thing about religion that really appeals to people — the idea that, no matter how sinful a person may be, he or she can always find redemption. Jesus was/is symbolic of the accessibility of that redemption. To be the spiritual middleman between a perfect God and imperfect men, it was necessary that Jesus be closer to perfect than imperfect.

"You don't know how much people need God," Paul (Harry Dean Stanton) said to him during his hallucination. "You don't know how happy He can make them. He can make them happy to do anything."

And Paul concluded that idea of the Messiah was far preferable to the reality of the man.

"I'm glad I met you," Paul said, "because now I can forget all about you. My Jesus is much more important and much more powerful."

The Jesus of "The Last Temptation of Christ" was much too human for many of the faithful.

I'm Forever Blowing Ballgames ...

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Ring Lardner (John Sayles): [serenading White Sox after Game 5, to the tune of "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles"] I'm forever blowing ballgames, pretty ballgames in the air. I come from Chi, I hardly try, just go to bat and fade and die. Fortune's coming my way, that's why I don't care. I'm forever blowing ballgames, and the gamblers treat us fair.

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"Eight Men Out," the movie about the Black Sox Scandal that premiered 25 years ago today, is one of my all–time favorite sports movies.

In the 21st century, it is almost a cliche to regard professional athletes as overpaid prima donnas — and, to be sure, many of today's professional athletes are precisely that.

But it wasn't always that way. It certainly wasn't that way in 1919 when the Chicago White Sox — who are still believed by many knowledgeable baseball folk to be one of the best squads of all time — deliberately threw the World Series on the promise of a big payoff from gamblers.

Both the movie and the book upon which it was based indicated that the key to the conspiracy was the allegiance of star pitcher Eddie Cicotte (David Strathairn), who resisted initial attempts to convince him to throw the Series.

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Bill Burns (Christopher Lloyd): Eddie's gettin' too old for this. I know what it's like. You walk out there with your arm hangin'.

Billy Maharg (Richard Edson): You couldn't pitch when you was young, Burnsie.

Bill Burns: Eddie's the key. If we don't get him, we can forget about it.

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In Cicotte's 1919 contract, White Sox owner Charlie Comiskey, who comes across as a greedy cheapskate in the book and the movie, had promised a bonus to Cicotte if he won 30 games that year; then, when it appeared that Cicotte might actually win 30 games, Comiskey allegedly ordered manager Kid Gleason (John Mahoney) to bench him in the final weeks of the season, ostensibly to rest him for the World Series.

(That was a claim that was a little hard to swallow, considering that the White Sox took the American League pennant by only 3½ games over runnerup Cleveland.

(The Indians had a 10–game winning streak in September. Meanwhile, the Sox limped across the finish line, losing seven of their last nine games.

(I've never heard anyone mention it, but that end–of–season skid by the Sox provided them with plausible cover for their collapse in the Series.)

Cicotte finished with 29 wins.

But he missed five starts, and it is certainly reasonable to think he would have won at least one of them — maybe more. That is apparently what Cicotte thought, too.

Anyway, when that happened, Cicotte agreed to participate in the conspiracy. He was 35 years old. He knew his career would be ending soon, and he had a wife and two daughters (a third child was born that year) to support.

And the $10,000 that was being offered to him was nearly twice his contract salary.

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Chick Gandil (Michael Rooker): You go back to Boston and turn 70 grand at the drop of a hat? I find that hard to believe.

Sport Sullivan (Kevin Tighe): You say you can find seven men on the best club that ever took the field willin' to throw the World Series? I find that hard to believe.

Chick Gandil: You never played for Charlie Comiskey.

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When Cicotte agreed to throw the Series, it opened the floodgates. The #2 pitcher in the rotation, Lefty Williams (James Read), got in on the conspiracy, along with a few other key players. There were eight in all including outfielder Hap Felsch (Charlie Sheen) and infielder Fred McMullin (Perry Lang), a utility player who did not play enough to affect the outcomes of games but was permitted to join the conspiracy after he heard other players talking about it and threatened to blow the whistle on them if he was not included.

Comiskey didn't exactly help himself with the rest of the team, either. He had promised them bonuses if they won the pennant, but when they did (with a winning percentage of .629), their "bonuses" turned out to be bottles of celebratory champagne (which, reportedly, were flat).

Consequently, many of the players were bitter. It was fertile ground for gamblers wanting to fix the Fall Classic.

Based on eyewitness accounts, most of the players who agreed to throw the World Series were obviously guilty. Cicotte lost two games, and Williams lost three (a World Series record), which was enough for Cincinnati to take the best–of–nine series.

But even today, nearly a century later, doubts remain about whether two players — Shoeless Joe Jackson (played by D.B. Sweeney) and Buck Weaver (John Cusack) — did anything to alter the outcome.

Jackson's batting average in the series was .375, he committed no errors (an important point on a team that made 12 errors in eight games), and he hit the series' only home run. Weaver hit .324 and also made no fielding errors.

(Cusack's Weaver may have been the most tragic figure in the story. Jackson was illiterate. His testimony before the grand jury clearly suggested he knew of the conspiracy but left the question of his actual participation open to interpretation. Shoeless Joe, it is worth pointing out, never received any payment.

(The evidence against Weaver was practically non–existent.)

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Ring Lardner (John Sayles): Sports writers of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your bar privileges.

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The infamous Black Sox scandal might never have seen the light of day, though, if not for the efforts of two intrepid Chicago sports writers, Ring Lardner (played by the movie's director, John Sayles) and especially Lardner's mentor, Hugh Fullerton (played by writer Studs Terkel), to expose what had happened.

Fullerton was a popular and prestigious sports writer whose suspicions were aroused before the start of the Series when he heard persistent talk that Cincinnati was a lock to win. When the Reds actually did win, Fullerton wrote a series of articles that forced major league baseball to investigate — and, ultimately, ban the eight ballplayers who had been involved (in some cases, as I say, allegedly so) from baseball for life.

Presumably for dramatic purposes, Sayles made some alterations to the story, particularly the part involving Fullerton and Lardner. In the movie, the two agreed, before the start of the first game, to keep score individually and make notes about plays that appeared "fishy." In reality, though, Fullerton did that with Hall of Fame pitcher Christy Mathewson.

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Before the Series began, Gleason heard rumors of a fix as well, but he kept insisting that the players would come around. Perhaps they would have if Williams' wife had not been threatened before the eighth game. Williams was scheduled to pitch Game 8, and, like Cicotte, he had grown disenchanted with the scheme and seemed ready to pitch his usual game — until a hired killer threatened her.

The book on the scandal by Eliot Asinof was published 25 years before the movie was made, but the timing of the movie's release could hardly have been much better. Almost a year after the movie premiered, Pete Rose was banned from baseball for gambling on games.

What were the odds?

The Special Magic of Music

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"Look out any window
Look out any open door
Look out any window
See what's going on
In the world around you."

Bruce and Jonathan Hornsby

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Twenty–five years ago today, I started working for a midsized daily newspaper in north Texas.

That sentence really doesn't do justice to the wide range of emotions I was experiencing on this day in 1988. Some background information probably is in order.

I grew up in Arkansas, went to school there, and I had been working there ever since finishing my schooling (or so I thought). My life was there. My friends were there. And, by 1988, I felt like I had a few things going for me — not everything I had hoped for but some things. I was working for the newspaper I had dreamed of working for since I was a boy. It didn't pay as well as I guess I had hoped it would, and I had been looking for alternatives in 1988, but that didn't change the fact that I was proud to be a part of that organization.

My parents, both natives of Texas, had moved back there a few years earlier, and my mother was helping me in any way she could think of to find a more significant job. She offered suggestions, which were of little help, frankly, from a distance — but her ideas did help me stay focused.

Mom was better at identifying options in her own territory, and she encouraged me to move to Texas. If a better job could not be found, I could go to graduate school and find some sort of temporary job to make ends meet.

By the summer of 1988, I had been accepted by the University of North Texas' graduate program, and I had been offered a job at the Denton newspaper. It felt like the planets were moving into line.

I didn't really have a long–term plan in mind. If I had, I would have realized that about the only thing you can do with a master's in journalism is teach, and teaching was not my long–term objective in those days. Don't get me wrong. I've enjoyed working with students, sharing with them the things I have learned over the years. I hope it will make them better journalists.

But, even though I have now been teaching for close to one–eighth of my life, I'm not sure if that is where my future — or what is left of it — lies. Consequently, that degree may not have much real value in my life. I don't know yet.

Anyway, I decided to take the plunge for grad school. I gave my two weeks' notice in mid–July, and I made the move on August 7. In between, I picked up a few albums, and I listened to them a few times before my move, but I didn't really listen to them until after the move was behind me.

I wasn't sure at the time if I was doing the right thing. I guess it's normal to have such doubts. I had a vague idea of what I was getting. I would be living close to my parents and my brother for the first time since I was in school (and, ironically, I would be going back to school at about the same time that I moved so close to my family) and in an area with which I was pretty familiar. After all, I'd been visiting Dallas all my life. It seemed like my best option.

But, fairly quickly, I discovered that, for many reasons, living someplace is not the same as visiting the same place. After the move was over, I could look around my apartment and see all kinds of things that were familiar — but they were in new surroundings, and those surroundings didn't include my friends back in Little Rock.

My life had changed, and there were many times when I thought it wasn't for the better. I wanted free time in the evenings, which I had, but my friends were more than 300 miles away. When school started up a few weeks later, I discovered that my evenings would be taken up with an entirely new preoccupation — graduate school and the demands of each class.

My job was the same and yet different, too. I was doing the same work for the newspaper that I had done before — but my new job was at an afternoon newspaper whereas I had spent the last 4½ years working for a morning newspaper.

The difference between them was, literally, night and day.

For the latter, I worked nights; the hours changed a bit over the years, but typically I went to work around 3 p.m., and my shift ended around midnight. On high school and college football nights, it was not unusual for my shift to go on until 2 or 3 in the morning.

For the former, I had to be at work by 5 a.m. in order to finish putting together that afternoon's newspaper. Trying to function for the first month or so was like trying to cope with a never–ending case of jet lag. I would find myself at home in the afternoons, totally uncertain what I should be doing. Half of me said I should be getting ready for work, and the other half reminded me that I had already been to work.

It was during this time that I listened — really listened — to the records I had purchased in the weeks before my move. (In hindsight, I probably should have waited until after my move to purchase those records. Those vinyl LPs were pretty heavy, and I didn't need the additional bulk.)

The most prominent probably was "Scenes From the Southside," Bruce Hornsby's followup to his Grammy–winning debut album, "The Way It Is."

It's hard to describe my mindset at that time. Somewhere in my mind, I think I always expected to move back to Arkansas. I had never imagined my life being anywhere else. I guess I figured my exile to Texas would be temporary.

And, too, I think I was in kind of a state of disbelief. I had left behind what had always been my dream job for a very uncertain future.

Well, here I am, 25 years later, and I haven't been back to Arkansas except for visits. I haven't lived in Texas the whole time, either — I lived in Oklahoma for four years — but my exile has lasted a lot longer than I dreamed it would.

Most of the time, I suppose, that doesn't bother me, but there are times when it does ... like football Saturdays and occasions when my thoughts return, either through reverie or by force, to the days of the past.

And today, on the 25th anniversary. I remember how I felt on that first day — anxious, exhilarated and then totally astonished to be finished with my work by 2 in the afternoon! Then I went home, stretched out on my couch and fell asleep!

Heck, I had been up since shortly before 4 a.m.

When I woke up, I listened to that Bruce Hornsby album, especially the track titled "Look Out Any Window." I listened to it over and over. I thought of the friends I had left behind, some of whom are deceased now, and I thought of the future, much of which has now played out in my life. I can only hope there is more to come before I check out.

Life goes on within you and without you, George Harrison wrote. I never really knew what that meant until 25 years ago today.

That is the special magic, the special power of music.

Worshipping in the Church of Baseball

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"I believe in the Church of Baseball. I've tried all the major religions and most of the minor ones. I've worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary, and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I learned that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn't work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology."

Annie (Susan Sarandon)

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It's been 25 years since "Bull Durham" premiered in America's theaters, but I can still remember when I first saw it.

I was working at the Arkansas Gazette on the sports copy desk, which required me to work nights and weekends. I had been doing that for nearly 4½ years, and at this time in 1988, I was making plans to move to Texas to pursue my master's degree.

In hindsight, it wasn't the best time to be starting a new relationship. Nevertheless, that is what I was doing.

On one of my nights off, I took a girl named Mary to see "Bull Durham" at a theater in Little Rock. She had seen it before, but she didn't mind seeing it again. She liked it. I hadn't seen it.

It was a delightful movie. The sports genre is rather crowded, but "Bull Durham" brought a fresh quality to its subject, perhaps because it managed to combine sports, drama/romance and comedy almost seamlessly.

Mary was already a baseball fan — the topic accounted for the vast majority of our conversation on our first date — but even if she had no interest in the sport, I think the drama/romance and comedy would have kept her interested in the movie.

The love story part was pretty easy to grasp (and, I must say, Mary was a sucker for a love story). Veteran catcher Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) and young hotshot pitcher Nuke LaLoosh (Tim Robbins) were vying for the affections of Annie, the team's groupie who made a habit of picking one player each season as her personal project. I always thought it was interesting that the on–screen fireworks were strongest between Sarandon and Costner — but, off screen, it was Sarandon and Robbins who had a long–term relationship.

Actually, I suppose, the movie was really about life and love and relationships. It just happened to be set against a sports backdrop. Personally, I found it to be a rather routine kind of love story — albeit with better writing than most — but, like any story, it needed a good hook, and sports provided the hook.

In spite of some marketers' attempts to present it in a different light, "Bull Durham" wasn't really a sports movie. That was a shortcoming that some moviegoers may have found unforgivable. It didn't really bother me at the time because I understood what it was.

Still, it helped to have some knowledge of the game in order to fully appreciate the often–crackling byplay between Crash and Nuke. As any baseball fan will tell you, pitchers and catchers often hold brief conferences on the pitcher's mound, usually to discuss strategy. But the mound conferences in "Bull Durham" were a little different.

Like when Crash and Nuke met on the mound to discuss Nuke's burning desire to "bring the heater" — i.e., throw a fastball. Crash, who had been signed to tutor Nuke, resented his attitude — and told the opposing batter to expect a fastball. The batter, of course, crushed it.

When they met on the mound while the batter was rounding the bases, Nuke muttered in wonder, "That sucker teed off on that like he knew I was gonna throw a fastball!"

"He did," Crash replied.

"How?" wondered a bewildered Nuke.

"I told him," Crash confided to Nuke.

Another time, after Crash told a batter what to expect and the batter drilled the ball over the fence to ruin Nuke's shutout, Crash remarked, "Anything that travels that far ought to have a damn stewardess on it."

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But the funniest mound conference probably came when virtually the entire lineup was gathered at the mound, each player with his own crisis to resolve. Nuke thought his eyelids were jammed, one player wanted a live rooster to take the curse off his glove, and no one knew what to give a teammate for his upcoming wedding.

"We're dealing with a lot of shit," Crash told the assistant coach ...

Who replied, "Well, candlesticks always make a nice gift, and maybe you could find out where she's registered and maybe a place setting or maybe a silverware pattern."

I'm quite sure that mound conferences aren't like that in the majors, but in the minors, who knows?

An Active Afterlife

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"I'm the ghost with the most, babe."

Michael Keaton
Beetlejuice

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Other folks would have their own nominee for most quirky movie direcrtor, I'm sure, but I think I would be safe in picking Tim Burton.

Burton's had some mainstream hits, like 1989's "Batman," but mostly he has directed movies that could best be described as "quirky."

Let me be clear. I have nothing against quirky. I didn't particularly care for his first effort "Pee–wee's Big Adventure" in 1985, but I know people who liked it very much.

"Beetlejuice," the movie that made its debut 25 years ago today, was his next directorial project. And I liked it very much. It was just good offbeat fun.

The plot was centered on a young recently deceased couple (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) haunting the home they occupied before their deaths. Their objective is to frighten the folks who have bought the house and are making changes that the former occupants find intolerable.

Doing his best to throw a monkeywrench into the works was Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton), a bio–exorcist who appeared to be aiding the young couple but, in fact, was motivated by his desire for the daughter (Winona Ryder) of the house's new owners. She could see the ghosts, but her father couldn't and neither could her stepmother.

She was also — shall we say — a bit goth. Well, more than a bit.

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Lydia (Winona Ryder): "My whole life is a dark room. One. Big. Dark. Room."

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Beetlejuice's offensive behavior created a wedge between him and the couple, and he proceeded to pursue Ryder's somewhat naive character, with no regard for Davis or Baldwin.

Beetlejuice could not be trusted.

And no one could have played that role better than Keaton.

I've seen him in several movies now. I guess the first movie I saw that featured Keaton was "Night Shift," in which he and Henry Winkler (then best known as the Fonz from Happy Days) played night–shift attendants in a morgue.

Keaton was probably about 30 when he appeared in that movie. He was closer to 40 when he appeared in "Beetlejuice," and he had persuaded me, by that time, that he was capable of a wide range of movie roles, not just comedic ones.

But I guess I've mostly thought of him as a comedic actor.

Everyone knows his famous line, "I'm the ghost with the most," and I do think of that line when I think of Keaton playing Beetlejuice — but I think of other lines, too.

Like ... "Go ahead ... make my millenium." A nice Clint Eastwood allusion there.

Or ... "It's showtime!" after Ryder's character recited his name the requisite three times. Conjuring memories of Roy Scheider in "All That Jazz."

But my absolute favorite is when Beetlejuice is asked for his qualifications, and he replies ...

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"I attended Julliard. I'm a graduate of the Harvard business school. I travel quite extensively. I lived through the Black Plague and had a pretty good time during that. I've seen the EXORCIST ABOUT 167 TIMES, AND IT KEEPS GETTING FUNNIER EVERY SINGLE TIME I SEE IT ... NOT TO MENTION THE FACT THAT YOU'RE TALKING TO A DEAD GUY ... NOW WHAT DO YOU THINK? You think I'm qualified?"

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I liked Davis since I first saw her in a small role in "Tootsie" a few years earlier, and she played another likeable character in "Beetlejuice." Baldwin was another matter. I've seen him in some good things since "Beetlejuice" was released, but I wasn't overly impressed with his performance, and I don't think I had seen him in anything else before "Beetlejuice."

Sylvia Sidney was, well, a different matter entirely. In her late 70s in 1988, most of Sidney's film work was before my time when, apparently, she was in some demand as a leading lady. My memory of her is spotty — and mostly of her in supporting, not leading, roles. When I saw her in other movies, I recognized the face but could rarely recall her name.

As Juno the afterlife counselor, though, she made quite an impression on me with her deadpan delivery. She didn't win Best Supporting Actress for her peformance — she wasn't even nominated — but "Beetlejuice" co–star Geena Davis did win it for "The Accidental Tourist."