The Best Piece of Advice I’ve Ever Heard

RilalyLeave a comment

“You’ll figure it out,” Rodney Dangerfield informed a young, aspiring standup comedian who sought his counsel on “something in comedy.”[1]

Prior to this aspiring comedian approaching Rodney Dangerfield, we can guess that just about every comedian sought career advice from him. Not only was he one of the most successful standup comedians of his era, but he failed so miserably that he quit, and he didn’t just quit, regather, and form a comeback. He quit show business for ten years.

“To give you an idea of how well I was doing at the time I quit,” he recalled later, “I was the only one who knew I quit.”

Every comedian but they didn’t know what he figured out in his eventual comeback. They might have wanted to know what he figured out, how they could apply it to their act, or they might have wondered if he thought they should just quit too. The latter might have been the underlying question that no one asks aloud. “Now that you’ve seen my act, what do you think? How can I fix it, is it fixable, or “Should I just quit?”

The unknown, aspiring comedian who approached Dangerfield in this particular scenario was Jerry Seinfeld. We can guess that Dangerfield was probably trying to dismiss Seinfeld, hoping that yet another comedian would just leave him alone with their career-defining questions, or he found the answer to that question to be so loaded with variables, and so time consuming, that he didn’t want to go down that road with yet another aspiring comedian. Whatever the case, we can surmise that Seinfeld was disappointed by Dangerfield’s response, but Rodney probably thought it was the best piece of advice to hand out to anyone aspiring to be anything. We can probably translate his advice to “Hey, I had to figure this thing out for myself, and you do too. If you don’t want to, then you’ll have your answer.”

For all we know, Rodney sat in the audience during that Seinfeld’s act and decided that he didn’t know how to perfect it, fix it, or help Seinfeld personalize it better. We can guess that he didn’t think it was so bad that he didn’t know how to fix it, but that Seinfeld’s act was so unique and different from Rodney’s that that might have been the reason Rodney didn’t know how to fix it. Rodney might have even loved the Seinfeld’s act so much that he couldn’t wait to see how the comedian would fix all of the intricacies of the act. Perhaps he was a fan, and he didn’t want to meddle with another man’s act. Whatever the case actually was, “You’ll figure it out” seems dismissive, but as with all good advice and all perfect strawberries, it becomes tastier the more you chew on it.

Some advice is more immediate and usable. Former Major League pitcher Randy Johnson once talked about the advice fellow pitcher Nolan Ryan gave him. After watching “The Big Unit” pitch, Nolan informed him that the finishing step of his pitching motion should end approximately one inch further to the left. Randy said that that seemingly trivial piece of advice changed his whole career. He stated that he wouldn’t have accomplished half of what he did without it. He even went so far as to say he owed Nolan Ryan a lifelong debt for that career-changing advice. Some of us have received such advice, but for most of us, advice is more oblique and requires personal interpretation.

The best piece of advice I’ve ever heard combines an acknowledgment of the struggle to succeed with a notice that the recipients of such advice must find a unique, individualistic method of applying it. The best advice I’ve ever heard does not involve miracle cures, quick fixes, or the elusive true path to instant success “That can be yours for one low installment of $9.99!” Most of the best nuggets of information I’ve heard, such as “You’ll figure it out,” are so obvious that the recipient thinks they’ve wasted everyone’s time by asking the question.

The underpinning of “You’ll figure it out” suggests that there are no universal methods to achieving true individual success, especially in the arts. A struggling individual can watch a how-to video or read a training manual. They can study the various expert techniques and the experts’ interpretations of those techniques. They can internalize the advice offered by everyone and their brother, but at some point, individuals who hope to achieve true success eventually have to figure it all out for themselves.

Instant success is as rare in the arts as it is in every walk of life, but if an individual is lucky enough to avoid having to figure it out, they’re apt to find the level of success they achieve meaningless when compared to those who experience failure, adjust accordingly, and struggle to carve out their own niche.

In the course of my career in low-paying jobs, I worked with a number of flash-in-the-pan employees who didn’t think they needed to to figure anything out. They considered themselves Tom-Cruise-in-shades naturals. They were the high-energy, fast-talking, glamour types who focus so much energy on their new job that they burst out of the gate to thunderous applause. Trainers and bosses love them. “Look at Bret!” they say, high-fiving Bret in the hall, hoping to inspire everyone within earshot to be more like Bret. The one thing the powers-that-be do not see, or don’t know, is that these high-energy, fast-talking, glamorous, flash-in-the-pan types often burn out after reaching the immediate goals that define them as successful.

Those who experience a measure of instant success are often the darlings and studs of the training class. They can answer every question, and they often enter the training seminar with quotes on success from the famous and successful. They treat training classes as a competition, as one would an athletic event, and they’re not afraid to do touchdown dances soon after the release of the initial productivity numbers. They wear the clothes and drive the cars to foster the image. They may even go so far as to have someone in authority catch them reading a personal success guide that one of them may read to chapter two. Most of them won’t read that far, however, because most of them aren’t in it for the long-haul.

Bullet-point, large idea minds have no patience for the time it takes to figure out the minutiae the rest of us will pine over in the agonizing trial-and-error process. The instantly successful don’t heed Rodney Dangerfield’s advice to “figure it out,” because they already have it all figured out. Either that or they’ve done so much to foster the image of one who already has that they don’t want to stain that image with new knowledge. They seek the quick-learner perception, and most of what they attain after the flurry-to-impress stage lies in either the knowledge they dismiss as something they already knew or inconsequential minutiae. They just know what they know, and that’s enough for the show.

They are also not good at taking criticism, as most constructive criticism calls for a restart, and they’re much too smart for a restart. To be fair, some of this criticism is bestowed on quick learners by jealous types who enjoy feeling they have greater authority on the subject, but some of that criticism is constructive. It falls upon all of us to figure out whether we are receiving helpful criticisms or competitive insults. Some criticism should make us wonder if we’re deluding ourselves with the belief that we’re as accomplished as we think. Some suggests that to find success in our craft, we should humbly consider doing it like someone else. In some cases, the criticism is correct, for there’s nothing wrong with following a proven path to success. That advice can be right or wrong for us, but that is just something else we have to figure out.

✽✽✽

“Do you have any tips on how to keep writing?” a fellow writer once asked me. My first inclination was to tell him about a book I knew that covers this very topic. I empathized with the idea that writing has few immediate rewards, and I enjoyed the perception of being a writer who knows what he is talking about when it comes to writing. I never read that book about writing, but I was sure it was loaded with all the usual ideas: “Keep Post-it notes on hand, so you don’t miss out on those little inspirations that could turn into great ideas.” Another solid idea they offer is, “Write a story that occurred in your life, for your life is an excellent cavern that can be mined for constant gems.” Then there is the ever-present, “Read, read, and read some more.” I could’ve told that writer about that book I never read, but even if I did take the time to read it and I found it invaluable to me, my recommendation would have been half-hearted. Experience has taught me that true success in writing requires nuanced ingenuity and creativity, and the writer has to figure these elements of the process out for themselves. If they don’t want to go through that time-consuming and laborious process, they should go do something else. That idea would form my addendum to Dangerfield’s quote: “You’ll [either] figure it out … or you won’t, and if you don’t, you might want to consider doing something else, and you’ll need to figure that out too.”

✽✽✽

I’m quite sure Jerry Seinfeld, sought Rodney’s advice, because he knew all about Rodney’s well-documented failures. Seinfeld likely knew that Rodney was so frustrated with his inability to achieve anything in the field of comedy that he just quit, and he didn’t try again for almost ten years. Seinfeld probably thought Dangerfield could give him a shortcut out of his personal cocoon and transform into a bona fide star. “You’ll figure it out!” the answer Rodney Dangerfield offered to the young Seinfeld, alluded to that struggle a butterfly goes through in its efforts to escape its cocoon. Yet, as any nature lover knows, if an outside influence cuts the butterfly’s struggle short, it will not gain the strength necessary to survive in the wild.

On that note, some critics grow frustrated with the amount of self-help charlatans moving from town to town in their Miracle Cure stagecoaches, who promise placebo elixirs to those seeking advice. They should direct these frustrations, instead, at those seeking shortcut exits from personal cocoons. When Seinfeld approached Dangerfield, and the aspiring writer approached me, they sought an alternative to learning from experience and failure, but Rodney’s advice suggests that he never found one. “You’ll figure it out,” might sound dismissive, but it also speaks to learning from experience and failure, and the resultant, almost imperceptible adjustments a craftsman must make to separate their final product from all of the others. The final answer for those seeking a quick fix is that there is no perfect piece of advice that we can give another who is unable or unwilling to display the temerity necessary to endure the necessary elements of failing, learning from that failure, and making all of the frustrating, time-consuming, and tedious little adjustments that must be made along the way. The final answer will be the answer you find. The final answer is that the struggle provides answers. The struggle informs the craftsman whether or not they are capable of fixing what is wrong with their presentation, and if they are desperate enough to do what is necessary to carve out some individual definition of success in their craft, and if they aren’t, they’ll figure that out too.

Chuck Klosterman on who wears the black hat in our society

RilalyLeave a comment

Chuck Klosterman’s new book I Wear the Black Hat is mostly a list of villains throughout pop culture and History.  The list, at times, is a little kitschy, and at times it’s a little serious, but whether you agree with him or not, Klosterman always has plenty of material to back up his claims.

In one of the passages of his book, Chuck Klosterman informs us that it’s no longer PC (Politically Correct) to call the PC movement PC.  He says that the very term PC is now nothing more than a “quaint distraction” that “no one takes too seriously anymore,” and “it feels like something that only matters to Charles Krauthammer.”  Klosterman says that the last time it was a “correct term to use to describe the linguistic issue in America was (roughly) between 1986 to 1995.”

Klosterman

It drives some of us “really, really crazy” when an individual tells us that a term, or phrase, that we use to describe a movement no longer properly describes that movement.  These people are prone to say, “You should stop using that term,” or something like, “That is so yesterday dude.”

‘Ok,’ I mentally respond, while reading this particular condemnation in the book I Wear the Black Hat (Or should I say African-American Hat). ‘What term, or phrase, would Mr. Klosterman prefer we use to describe the current incarnation of the PC movement?’ The answer, we find by dutifully reading on, is that we don’t replace it, unless you’re Charles Krauthammer.  It’s, apparently, just not a phrase that people should use anymore.  In other words, the cynical would respond, “it drives certain people (like Klosterman’s wife) really, really crazy” to try and defeat the idea that some people are trying inflict speech codes upon our language, so just drop it, and we can all get along a lot better.

If the import of Klosterman’s message on PC speech codes were that I’m not to be considered hip anymore when I use a term like PC, I’ll take that, because I’m admittedly about as far from hip as one person could possibly be.  If he’s telling us that the term PC is no longer an apt description of the attempts to control language, however, he’s going to have to provide us with a substitute.  I wouldn’t use that substitute, of course, but it would strengthen his argument to do so.

I was going to argue that the PC movement may not be as overt as it was between 1986 to 1995, but it is, we’re just more assimilated to it now.  Those of us that railed against PC speech codes in that era, as Klosterman later points out, simply lost the war.  The difference between the culture that existed between 1986 to 1995 and now, is that it’s simply less shocking to us now when someone tries to control how we speak.  It’s one of those sad but true facts that we’ve all learned to accept and a code we now have to lived by.

It used to be shocking to some of us when someone, be they a politician, or an obnoxious member of a particular group, would tell us that we weren’t speaking correctly, and it would elicit rebellion back then.  That rebellion was put forth by many, but in Klosterman’s opinion no one did it more often, or as loudly, as Andrew Dice Clay and 2 Live Crew.  Klosterman states that PC climate of that era provided an historical window in which an Andrew Dice Clay could become a megastar, and that “he would not have been a megastar in any other historical window—if (Dice Clay) had happened at a time when vulgarity somehow felt less important.”

Klosterman declares that that PC era was “painlessly oppressive” and those in that era experienced “low level anxiety” when they argued in public in which “Even casual conversation suddenly had the potential to get someone fired.”  He describes how sexism and racism were given birth, or at least re-birth, during this era, and that the “backlash was stupid and adversarial.”  In other words, if we are to read Klosterman correctly, we presumably should’ve all acquiesced to the PC crowd a lot sooner, so they could’ve won the war a lot quicker and saved us a whole bunch of adversarial exchanges.

I don’t know much about Klosterman’s life, and if he has experienced the hammer of the PC police personally, but those of us that have know that the PC police don’t just go away. They move onto the next thing, whatever that thing is.  To some of us, it is very important, and at the risk of inflating it beyond reason, vital to the the free speech clause that we continue to provide them the “stupid and adversarial” backlash that keeps them somewhat close to being in check.

In the final portion of this chapter, Klosterman does concede that the winners of this war, these advocates of speech-limitation, “Didn’t necessarily make a better argument, they just wore the culture down.  Almost everything that these advocates wanted in 1990, have been adopted by the world at large, in that we now err on the side of caution for the potentially offended.”  So he basically admits that the PC crowd is still on the march, but that it’s just not PC to call them PC anymore.

The Villians

The much ballyhooed (and selling point for the book) chapter on O.J. Simpson doesn’t live up to the hype.  The hype that the publishers used to try to move the book, was that Klosterman was going to tell us O.J.’s second biggest mistake.  The second biggest mistake O.J. made, in Klosterman’s opinion, is that O.J. didn’t go into hiding after the trial exonerated him of the brutal slaying of his wife and Ron Goldman (yawn).  Klosterman advises O.J., as O.J.’s adviser Alan Dershowitz advised O.J., that he should’ve kept a low profile, or move, or do anything but what he did by going out and living the O.J. lifestyle that O.J. knew pre-incarceration.  Klosterman, would’ve advised O.J. against writing that book, or going on talk shows to give his side.  A much more interesting chapter, as if it hasn’t been covered already, would’ve been to focus on our society’s reaction to O.J. post-verdict.  It would’ve been interesting to read Chuck’s analysis of the young kids (who never knew O.J. the running back, announcer, or Naked Gun star) asking for O.J.’s autograph, the manner in which he was fawned over in public, and he could’ve tied this into the culture’s glorification of bad guys dating back to Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, Billy the Kid, and those that wore the black hats.

The most interesting chapter, in my opinion, other than the “Eagles” chapter that was covered in one of my previous blogs, is the chapter concerning how Muhammad Ali is a villain.  Klosterman takes on this icon’s current, glorified status, stating that Muhammad Ali ruined a man’s life (Joe Frazier) for the expressed purpose of getting in the man’s head to win a fight.

I must painfully admit that I have been on Muhammad Ali’s side for much of the history of the Ali/Frazier story.  I was too young to have firsthand knowledge of the fight, or the debate that followed, and much of what I’ve seen, heard, and read has been after the fact analysis.  I was also very young when the debate started springing up around me, so I took the star’s side.  When I later learned that that put me on the same side of this debate as TV personality Bryant Gumbel, I knew I was on the wrong side. I didn’t yet know the specifics of why I was wrong, but I knew that Gumbel was consistently and obnoxiously, on the wrong side of history.  Thanks to Gumbel’s obnoxious takes on the matter, I began to strive for more objectivity on the story.  The productions I watched from that point on, including the one put together by HBO, “The Thilla in Manilla”, convinced me that Ali was a bad guy, and a bully, that would stop at nothing to humiliate Frazier, until it reached what some have termed an historical level of betrayal.

The other illuminating fact Chuck unearths, that I must say I didn’t know, is that Ali met with the KKK to discuss their shared belief on the evils of interracial marriage.  One has to think that even the obnoxious Bryant Gumbel would not have been eager to agree with Ali on this point, as Gumbel’s mother, and his wife are white.  If you have ever watched Gumble interview a subject he sides with, however, you have to think this may have been a possibility.  Gumble is, if nothing else, consistently obnoxious. The likely outcome, if Ali brought this up in a Gumble interview, would’ve been a surreptitious edit.  It is possible that this obnoxious, succumbent to African-American stars may have found a surreptitious way of agreeing with Ali, and he may have found a way of calling those that opposed  an “(effing) idiot” for disagreeing with whatever  “the greatest” had to say on the matter.  Klosterman concludes this piece by asking how many icons, other than Ali, could’ve survived with their image intact after such a meeting with the KKK, and such a shared belief, as that.

Klosterman also states that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a villain, because he was once mean to a guy from Pearl Jam.  Klosterman says that the guys from Pearl Jam are nice guys, and they have a history of being appreciative of their fans, and Jabbar purportedly does not.  These facts, when put together, should lead the reader to believe that Jabbar is a villain.  Did Jabbar thump an autograph-seeking child in the forehead, did he push an old lady to the ground, or did he set Mother Teresa on fire after a particularly heated debate on the virtues of altruism?  No, he was mean to a guy from Pearl Jam.  Mean may even be a relative term in Chuck’s description of what happened.  I read dismissive more than mean, but apparently no one can be dismissive of guys in Pearl Jam, or they’ll write a song about them, and Klosterman will like that song so much that he’ll feel enough allegiance to call the one that dismissed them a villain on that basis alone.

Chevy Chase is also a villain in Klosterman’s view, and this is based on the fact that Chase doesn’t take his role in entertainment seriously enough.  Klosterman does lay out the fact that none of Chase’s co-stars in movies or on TV showed up for his roast, and that that pretty much means that those co-stars didn’t care for him.  Chuck revisits a fight scene between Bill Murray and Chevy Chase, where Bill Murray called Chevy a “medium talent”, to suggest that Chase was overrated and underachieving at the same time.  Chuck writes that the book “Live from New York, as oral history of Saturday Night Live” is littered with people taking pot shots at Chevy, and that the creator of the show “Community” called him a bad word, but Klosterman believes the nut of why Chevy is a bad guy exists in the fact that Chevy hates himself.  Klosterman writes that one of Chevy’s most famous lines: “I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re not” is not something he’s happy about.  Klosterman also writes that Chevy “never opted for the serious roles that so many comedians vie for throughout their careers.”

Now I agree with Marlon Brando that it doesn’t take a lot of talent to act in movies, but perhaps Chevy feared some sort of revelation of his “medium talent” in those roles.  From the rare glimpses we’ve seen of Chase’s obnoxiousness, it’s hard to believe he’s a good guy, and as Klosterman writes, we can take some of Chevy’s cohort’s criticism as jealousy, but to suggest that he’s a villain based on the fact that he didn’t take his career serious enough might be a bit of a stretch.

In the “Eagles chapter” that has little to do with the villain premise, except perhaps thematically, Klosterman writes that he doesn’t think certain bands, and singers, are bad guys, he takes a moment to suggest why Mr. Bungle is not as great as some people think.

Mr. Bungle “was way more interesting than it was” writes Chuck Klosterman.  Klosterman claims Mr. Bungle was a “self-indulgent side project”.  He calls it “my real world introduction to The Problem of Overrated Ideas”.  He says that Mike Patton, in particular, was “improvisational and gross.  Musically and otherwise: He (Patton) stated that he would eat huge portions of mashed potatoes and chase it with schnapps,” Patton told MTV News, “Then he would sneak into his local laundromat and vomit into washers and dryers.” The fact that Klosterman does not mention Mike Patton by name, only as the singer, suggests that there may be some personal animus that drives his review of the band, but I could be wrong. Klosterman also basically claims that Patton should’ve stuck with the more mainstream Faith No More.

First of all, a decent study of Mike Patton’s history would show Klosterman that not only was Faith No More Patton’s other band, but it was his side project (not the other way around).  At one point in his career, Patton did give Faith No More his full concentration, but it was mostly viewed as a promotional vehicle for Mr. Bungle.  As evidence of this, Faith No More’s first video “Epic” shows Patton in a Mr. Bungle T-Shirt.

All personal preferences and disagreements aside, it says a lot about Klosterman’s listening habits that they’re, at least in part, dictated by things said in interviews he finds distasteful. Klosterman writes that Patton’s improvisations are “gross musically”, and this leads the informed reader to believe that Klosterman has probably only listened to the first Mr. Bungle album.  I’ve listened to this self-titled debut ad nauseum, and I’ve basically reached a point where I’ve deleted all of the silly and gross improvisations from that album on my iPod, and I used to delete the same portions from the audio tapes I recorded the album onto.  What you’re left with, when you delete the silliness, is a great piece of work from a bunch of teenagers.  (As a side note, Mr. Bungle’s other two albums succeeded without such deletions.  Those albums were tight in their musical structure, and all the silliness lay behind them by this point.)  Perhaps, Klosterman should do more homework on a subject he apparently knows little to nothing about.

Are you telling me, Chuck, that Ozzy Osbourne and Motley Crue never did anything silly and gross (like biting the heads off bats), and they’re never been immature in interviews? How old were your peeps when they snorted a line of ants?  The guys in Mr. Bungle were teenagers when their self-titled, first album came out, and teenagers love bathroom humor and fart jokes, but the members of the group eventually grew up and produced two of the best, most consistent, and serious albums of music I’ve ever heard.

I’ve always thought that the best reviews were those that dissected a book in a negative manner, as opposed to those glowing, sound bite style reviews (“A Tour de Force”) that the reviewer writes, so that he might get his name on the cover of the book.  It may be just me, but I’ve always thought that negative reviews act as an EKG monitor for the heart of a book, and positive reviews usually act as a fawning mechanism for the star status of the author.  I also don’t care what a person’s personal review of the book is, if it’s based on the fact that they like Muhammad Ali, I want to know if it was a good book or not, and I think a thorough dissection of a book, can only be done in a negative manner.  If you do want my opinion, however, I Wear the Black (African American) Hat is an excellent, fun read that dissects our era (Chuck and I are about two years a part) in a manner, it appears, that only Chuck Klosterman can do this well.

When Geese Attack!

RilalyLeave a comment

What happens when animals attack? Those of us who watch Shark Week or any of the all-too-numerous, reality clips that appear on just about every network and YouTube know what happens when animals attack. We know the formula for these shows. We know victims will discover the one consistent truth about nature: There are no consistent truths. We expect to hear those more accustomed to handling animals relay proper safety protocols to the audience to lessen the risk, but even the most experienced handlers admit that there are no steadfast rules when it comes to predicting or preventing animal aggression. Those of us who pay attention to this formula, also now expect lucky survivors to state that they have no hard feelings for their attackers. At the end of the clip, they say something about how they know it’s just the nature of the beast:

“I don’t blame the animal and I hold no ill will towards it,” they say. “I was in its domain. It just did what comes naturally to it, and I deserve at least some of the blame for being there in the first place.”

Before we regular viewers became aware of this formula, some of us just stared at our screens in silent awe when we heard these unemotional reactions. We thought these survivors were either wonderful, forgiving people, or they were just plain stupid. They could’ve had limbs torn from their bodies, yet they maintained that they were not bitter. Some of us found this reaction so incomprehensible that we began to wonder if there wasn’t a bit of gamesmanship going on. We wondered if the networks test-market victims’ reactions to these clips. We wondered if they discovered that audiences might find such violent clips a little less horrific, and more entertaining, if survivors come out on the other side of the clip with wonderful, forgiving sentiments, granting their attackers a full pardon.

We’ve all had friends who enjoy hearing cruel jokes about friends and coworkers, but they refuse to laugh until they add a qualifier to relieve themselves of the guilt of finding the joke funny. “What an awful thing to say,” they say to distance themselves from the mean-spirited nature of the joke. On that note, it’s difficult for most individuals to admit that they enjoy watching an alligator tear a human apart, without some sort of qualifier that suggests that the video is nothing more than a tutorial on the brutal realities of nature. Neither party truly believes this. We know we experience some schadenfreude watching fellow humans suffer, but we need to have a wink and a nod agreement with the producers of such content. This helps absolve us of our voyeuristic need for carnage with a qualifier that suggests that viewers are not awful for enjoying other people’s trauma. If this isn’t the case, why do almost all victims appear to react in such a formulaic manner, as if they’re reading from a script? If they’re not reading from a script, we can speculate, the producers don’t air the disgruntled, bitter testimonials that go off the proverbial script.

Here in the Land of Hysterical Emotional Reactions, we know it is perfectly reasonable for victims to state that a bear is “Just doing what comes naturally to them,” when it rips a person apart for the delicious treats they happen to have in their backpack while in the bear’s domain. We know that inherent within the victim testimonials is the attempt to avoid appearing foolish, as they would if they tried to suggest that they had no idea that a bear might attack might occur after they walked into a bear preserve. Even those of who are skeptical of this whole practice must admit that we might consider such a person foolish, or at least more foolish than a guy who expressed surprise at a bear attacking them in a Schlotzky’s deli in Omaha, Nebraska.

We also understand that it’s the goal of the testifiers to appear reasonable when they say, “It was just a bear doing what a bear does” when she clenched her jaw on their face and left them looking like the elephant man. As informed people, we understand that to suggest that the attack was, in anyway, vindictive or personal or that the bear acted in any manner other than instinctual would make the victim appear foolish. We know wildlife doesn’t single people out for attack, and they prefer to avoid humans, unless conditions dictate otherwise. All of this is perfectly reasonable, even to those of us in the Land of Hysterical Emotional Reactions, but that logic and reasonability discounts the emotional, hysterical reactions one should have if a bear removes a limb, or leaves a face in a condition that now causes small children to run screaming in a mall.

I do not think I’m alone when I say that if a bear ripped me apart and left me on life support, in a coma, or clinging to life for months, I would spend the rest of my hysterically emotional life cheering bear hunters on. Would it be reasonable, seeing as how I was in a bear preserve when the bear attack occurred? It would not be, but most survivors of bear attacks should not be so reasonable that they are able to hide their new, lifelong, irrational fear (see hatred) of bears in the aftermath.

***

If there is one person we might excuse for being bitter and hateful, it is Charla Nash, the victim of a shocking 2009 chimpanzee attack. That 200-pound chimpanzee, affectionately known as Harold, lived with his owner in a suburban neighborhood. Harold not only blinded Charla, he severed her nose, ears, and hands, and she received severe lacerations on her face. Her life was as ruined as any who have survived an animal attack, but Ms. Nash somehow managed to forgive Harold and his owner. She wasn’t as forgiving as those who offer statements based on what I believe are a reaction to a “Do you want to be on camera? Then say this …” stated or unstated ultimatum. Charla Nash does appear to be forgiving, and that forgiveness appeared genuine.

Charla Nash

“I’ve gotten angry at times,” she told The Today Show, “but you can’t hold anger. It’s unhealthy. It goes through you. You’ve got to enjoy what you have.”

Ms. Nash’s response to her horrific moment in life provides a philosophical outlook on life that those of us who have lived without such a horrific moment occurring in our lives can use as inspiration in dealing with our comparative trivialities. Her reaction to such a vicious attack is nothing short of admirable. It’s a little incomprehensible to most of us, but we still respect Charla Nash for maintaining what appears to be genuine optimism about life after such an attack. The main character of this story, affectionately known as the goose guy, is not Charla Nash, however, and he should not be afforded the same admirable plaudits Nash is due.

As we see in this video, pro kayak angler Drew Gregory was fishing in a lake one day when a couple geese began swimming near him. Mr. Gregory decided to feed them some of the contents from his backpack. One goose, decided the best way to beat his competition to the food was to go directly to the source. Then, doing what geese do, this goose attempted to empty Gregory’s backpack. In the process, the goose sent Mr. Gregory overboard. If the sounds that followed Mr. Gregory’s splash were not the goose’s laughter, even the least competitive man could have confused them with some expression of dominance.

In the era of selfies, and YouTube videos of the most mundane activities one can imagine, it’s not shocking that a man would film himself fishing. People also filmed themselves fishing for TV shows long before the internet, and before most of us were born. When we were kids, we knew there were fishing shows on the other channels. We grew up with it, and we learned to accept the idea that other people must enjoy watching the people on these shows fish. Why would it continue to be on the air if people didn’t enjoy it? I don’t enjoy fishing, so I don’t understand why people do it, but I’ve had friends and family convince me that it has some virtues. I’ve yet to meet anyone who can convince me that watching another man fish has one redeeming quality that I might consider. I don’t understand the industry, but I don’t begrudge anyone who creates such a video and attempts to make a buck on it. All the power to you, but how does it help a star of one these shows to distribute an episode in which they were dominated by a goose? Why didn’t Dick Gregory hit the delete button soon after it happened? One could say, depending on what the video contains, that such a video might show that a person like Dick Gregory has a very healthy ability to laugh at himself. If that’s the case, he’s healthier than I am, for if I was the victim of a goose attack, no one but the geese would ever know about it. I would never watch this video again, my pride couldn’t take the hit, and I would avoid watching it with the hope that I might eventually be able to forget it ever happened.

Some have suggested that we are now at a point in human history when human beings will do whatever is necessary for fifteen minutes of fame. If Andy Warhol, the originator of this quote, lived to see this video and learned that the victim, Drew Gregory distributed it himself, and made himself available for aftermath commentary on a TruTV airing, I can only guess Warhol would smile and say, “Told you!”

“It’s just a goose,” many readers might say, “and what are the chances that an animal that averages seven to eight pounds could end a human life?” We can all agree that the chances are remote, but what are the chances that the same animal could do irreparable damage to an eyeball or an ear? What are the chances that a goose could land its victim in the hospital? I can tell you one thing. I would bother calculating odds or possibilities in the moment. I’m guessing that some primal, self-preservation tactics would rise, and I would do whatever was necessary to fight my attacker off.

I also guarantee that the networks that run such video clips would deem my video unusable, as I’m sure that videos of goose beheadings don’t test well in the market research that the networks conduct.

I am also confident I would not be the amiable dunce who would find a way to laugh about it later. I would not view such a moment as entertaining in anyway, nor would I qualify it by saying I was in goose’s environment, and I deserved everything that happened to me. I would view such a moment as one of those survival-of-the-fittest moments. In the moment, I wouldn’t think about all these video clips I’ve watched, and I wouldn’t recall the idea that the one thing we do know about nature is that it’s unpredictable. My impulses would override all that, and I would act. I would grab the thing by its throat, whisper some Hannibal Lecter lines to it, and separate its head from its body. If that bird managed to escape all retribution and I still had some angle on it, I would use my kayak oar like a Callaway I-MIX FT-5 and drive the bird in a manner that would make fellow lefty golfer Phil Mickelson proud. I imagine that drive would be fueled by the type of stress and fear that propels little old ladies to lift cars off their grandchildren, and in that light I don’t see Mickelson’s average 315.3 yard drive as an unreasonable distance.

If the goose managed to elude that, you can bet I wouldn’t be smiling and forgiving in the interview that followed. My, edited for television, version would go something like this:

“I don’t know how your network attained this video, but it has ruined my life. Everyone I know now calls me the ‘goose guy.’ If I get a hold of that goose, I will find the slowest, most agonizing death possible for it. I’ve already slaughtered twelve geese in this area, thinking that it might be that one that ruined my life, and I’m not sure if I’ve killed this particular goose yet, or not, but I’ll probably end up killing a dozen more before I rest.”

After witnessing a Rottweiler attack firsthand, I find myself relegated to the Land of Hysterical Emotional Reactions whenever an average, full-grown Rottweiler walks into a room. I strive to avoid irrational and emotional overreactions to all situations in life. When I encounter dogs with a particularly long history of vicious attacks, however, my reactions to them are now a part of me I can no longer control. I’ve lost arguments with those who state that no dog, be it Rottweiler, Pit bull, or otherwise is evil by nature. They cite science, and I cite hysterical emotions based on experience. I lose. Even as I’m losing these arguments, however, I know I’m not alone with such fears. Those who laugh at me or form opinions about my inferiority on this subject inform me that I am in the minority, and I may be, but I am sure that more people would join our screaming minority if they witnessed such vicious attacks firsthand. I’m also quite sure that most of what I consider a victim’s normal reactions to vicious, life-altering attacks by wild animals ends up on the cutting room floor of the ubiquitous clip shows. I know this because those who need to feel better about their enjoyment of such shows would not appreciate what people like me will do, and then say in the aftermath of such an attack.

If you enjoyed this piece, you might enjoy the other members of the seven strong:

The Thief’s Mentality

He Used to Have a Mohawk

That’s Me In the Corner (This is not a sequel to Mohawk, but it is another story that occurred in the same wedding.)

A Simplicity Trapped in a Complex Mind

You Don’t Bring me Flowers Anymore!

… And Then There’s Todd