Wish We Could Miss Some Things

Recently I had a conversation with an old friend of mine who knows much more than me about almost everything. The topic was BP and the profound environmental mishap taking place right now in the Gulf of Mexico. His thoughts on the subject were disturbing, and with that in mind, those of you who read this regularly and expect to enjoy slightly amusing and occasionally heartwarming anecdotes, should be forewarned that today’s topic is one of profound seriousness and dread. In fact, unless you just want to feel bad, I would recommend you go do something else entirely, perhaps take care of someone’s pretend sheep, for example, on Farmville, because today we must discuss something totally, totally serious. Namely, the resuscitation of Aerosmith’s career.

Aerosmith, for those of you too young to remember, were once a very important and influential rock band. Led by frontman Steven Tyler—yes, Liv Tyler’s father—and lead guitarist Joe Perry, Aerosmith walked their way into the music scene in the early 1970s with a number of now-classic, eternally-catchy rock songs. They remained relevant throughout the 1980s and enjoyed a revival in the 1990s before the advent of dancing boy bands began to replace actual musicians around the turn of the century.

While Aerosmith do remain the number-one selling American rock band of all time, their last truly significant contribution to pop culture came in 1998 when they provided the soundtrack mega-ballad Don’t Want to Miss a Thing for the hit disaster film, Armageddon. (This is the movie when Bruce Willis blows up an asteroid before it hits Earth, not to be confused with Sudden Impact, where Robert Duvall blows up part of a comet before it hits earth, or Twister, where Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton spend two hours running from I think maybe the same tornado while yelling at each other.)

Anyway, back to our initial topic: Disaster in the Gulf! After listening to my very intelligent friend, it occurred to me that this oil spill problem is, in some respects, like Armageddon in reverse. For starters, the oil field from which this hole is leaking is immense. It’s one of the largest on Earth, stretching all the way up to Alabama. If the leak isn’t contained, if it bleeds out, there’s enough oil to potentially suffocate not just the majority of marine life in the Gulf but also vast portions of the Atlantic Ocean. Without getting too detailed and running the risk of making it obvious I am not an environmental engineer, the worst case scenario is that the whole thing could make our climate change conversation seem cute in comparison. The day may soon come where instead of ordering surf and turf we’ll just be ordering turf, and by turf I mean an actual square foot of topsoil with grass on it.

So, it’s pretty bad right now and could get much worse if they don’t stop the leak. (I won’t tell you my friend’s assessment of BP’s capacity to actually do this.) Anyway, in the meantime, at least, I think it’s time for a sequel. It is summer, after all, and a good old fashioned Hollywood blockbuster might be capable of getting our minds off the increasing plausibility that 2012 might not just be another disaster movie to add to our list.

Armageddon II: Plug It Up! will pick-up in real time. Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler are now thirty-something parents, but, like most Hollywood thirty-something parents, they look wonderful and act curiously hip. Ben is still a “roughneck,” working on an oil rig far off the coast of Louisiana. Now, like his late father-in-law Bruce Willis, he’s in charge of his own crew comprised of Owen Wilson, Steve Buscemi, and, of course, Michael Clark Duncan, who can heal people by singing in his very deep voice.

In this fictionalized version of our disturbing reality, Ben’s crew is called in by the President—played by Chris Rock, because he’s had practice with the roll—to once again save the world. The following is a potential conversation held in the Oval Office.

Ben: With all due respect, Mr. President, what makes you think we can plug that leak?

Chris: Ain’t you the lucky guys that blew up that comet fourteen years ago?

Owen: Well, actually sir, that was really more of an asteroid than a comet.

Steve: Yeah, and, uh, we were in outer space, you know, not the bottom of the frikkin’ ocean.

Chris: Well, you know something boys? We’re out of options right about now, aren’t we? Way I figure it, you go get yourselves down to the Gulf of Mexico or we’re all gonna’ be swimmin’ in oil. Now get outta’ my house!"

Ben, after receiving some very wise advice from the ghost of Bruce Willis, decides he must once again save the world. But not, of course, before he shares a soft, heartfelt goodbye scene with his wife and children.

Which, finally, brings us back to Aerosmith. Aerosmith, despite their substance-abuse issues and infighting, will provide a gorgeous ballad for this tender moment. It will be wonderful.

Shortly thereafter, Ben and the boys will suit up for their deep sea mission in slow motion while the disembodied voice of the President offers this speech to a panicked world.

“Big oil companies always braggin’ ‘bout the stuff they supposed to do. Like drilling for oil without polluting the whole Gulf of Mexico. So what they want, a cookie? Here’s a cookie for you: We’re all gonna’ die unless those sorry guys in that tiny submarine figure out a way to plug that hole up. All right, enough of all this. Warm up that jet.”

Ben, of course, realizes that the only way to stop the leak is if one of them stays behind and sacrifices themselves for the sake of humanity. Because I don’t want to spoil the ending, I will only offer a hint. This time, it is not Bruce Willis.

The movie ends, though, on a mostly happy note. The credits will roll, the lights will go up, Steven Tyler will sing us all a love song that will make us go out and buy the soundtrack album. The point is, movies do end. Even sequels stop being made. Eventually.

But what about the leak in the Gulf of Mexico? Will that end? And even if it does, either because it was plugged up or it merely bleeds itself out, will we ever put an end to, or even remotely curb, our addiction to oil?

BP cut corners in their quest to secure this oil. Their short-sided greed killed eleven men, devastated a region’s economy and perhaps permanently ruined the ecosystem of the entire Gulf of Mexico.

Our national government’s response to this crisis has been typically uninspiring. Federal regulations meant to avoid such maladies were either too lax to begin with or weren’t adhered to strictly enough to be effective, depending on whom you ask.

Tony Hayward is confused. Barrack Obama dropped the ball. We can point fingers until all the oil in this once-green earth has run out and we still probably won’t be any closer to accepting the uncomfortable truth of the matter: sellers need buyers.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to drive into town and rent a movie to get my mind off all this mess.

Just One Small Step

Each year around this time I am reminded that I would have made a terrible astronaut. Like many American boys and children in general, I had tremendous ideas about my eventual career choice. I went through a professional baseball phase, for example, inspired in large part by Ozzie Smith and the 1982 St. Louis Cardinals. Around the same time I also considered archeology due to the misconception that running and jumping and swinging around on bullwhips was something an archeologist often did. Then later, like countless children before me, I dreamed of being an astronaut. After all, how else would I end up in space? What hope was there that I would ever have the chance to help the rebels in their struggle against the evil galactic empire? I had to be an astronaut. They needed me.

So, what happened?

Math. Math always had a way of spoiling so many of my great ideas. I did not like math and it did not like me, and, to this day, when a student comes up to me in study hall and asks me to help them with their Pre-Algebra, I have to offer this disclaimer: “You’re really rolling the dice on this one, you know that, right?”

Yes, math happened. So, I steered away from any career that relied heavily on numbers or scientific facts, and instead focused my time on words and ideas. Which is just as well, because, even without the math issue, I wouldn’t have made it far in astronaut school. How do I know this? Very simple. My nephews have inadvertently forced me to acknowledge this fact every May for the last three or four years when they convince me to ride The Avalanche.

The Avalanche is one of their favorite rides at Cumberland County’s annual Springfest, held each May in Toledo, Illinois. Like most carnival rides, The Avalanche is loud, bright, and therefore immensely appealing to anyone too young to drive a car. It is composed of a large platform, probably thirty to forty feet wide, with a single row of seats lined across its length. This platform is attached to an arm that lifts the ride into the air and back down, spinning it while the platform itself, thank God, stays relatively parallel to the earth.

Sounds reasonable so far? Allow me to continue.

Shrill, multigenerational rock music blares from giant speakers positioned directly in front of the rider’s faces. Once seated and appropriately dazed by the intense sound, an automatic harness descends onto the chest cavity with a cruel clacking noise, thus making it almost impossible to hear the cracking of anyone’s ribs. Any hope of escape, along with the opportunity for normal breathing, is, at this point, gone. The rider is now entirely at the whim of the smirking workers running the decade’s old controls. Thus secure, a person cannot help but begin to shuffle back through their high school junior year for the correct pronunciation for the Spanish phrase, “Please don’t forget we’re up here spinning.”

Then the “fun” part begins.

Patrons are soon lifted a good thirty feet into the sky. Then they’re basically dropped. Then lifted again. And dropped. Lifted. And dropped.

Most children and adolescents are screaming in delight by this point, enthralled by this sensation, of being squeezed into a seat and then lifted, and dropped, quickly and without mercy, while AC/DC tells everyone in the vicinity about their highway to hell.

No wonder my six-year-old nephew asked me to ride it with him twice.

It occurred to me later on that about the only difference between all this “fun” we were having and what the CIA refers to as “enhanced interrogation techniques” is about three and a half minutes. What makes the ride actually enjoyable, even for the non-adults who signed up, is that it eventually stops. After all, it’s a large, expensive machine designed to make money, but it can only be profitable if it stops lifting and dropping people long enough to let another group with dozens of dollars worth of tickets onto the platform.

Now, imagine (and I did, constantly, throughout the ride) if the machine did not stop. What if it malfunctioned? What if the operators decided to just walk away for a smoke break with the controls switched to “eventual psychosis?” Or, worse, what if they weren’t workers at all, but instead members of a vast Al Qaeda sleeper cell, synchronized to leave all carnival rides running full blast throughout America until their demands were met?

These terrible ideas, then, led me to consider a more practical use for The Avalanche: interrogation device. We don’t need water boarding, or barking dogs, or guards who actually take pictures of themselves breaking numerous international agreements all at the same time. We merely need The Avalanche.

The Geneva Convention says absolutely nothing about carnival rides. Nothing. Imagine how many terrorist plots might be thwarted if our CIA and military had access to a smaller version of this contraption.

“Wow, Lieutenant. I’m impressed. You convinced him to disclose the whereabouts of the rocket launchers and to also admit he has a secret crush on Kate Gosselin. How in the world did you do that?”

“The Avalanche, sir.”

“Ooh. The Avalanche, huh? Sounds top secret. Is that some new technique they’re teaching over at Langley?”

“No, sir. It’s a miniature version of a small-town carnival ride that lifts you up in the air and drops you in a rapid, circular motion until you want to kill yourself, sir.”

“All right, Lieutenant, all right. Whatever. At ease.”

That’s how we win the war on terror, folks. Small town carnival rides. Which may beg the question, “If you’re too big of a baby for The Avalanche, why do you keep riding it time after time, year after year, even after you’ve eaten a corndog and know better?”

Part of me, I guess, still wants to prove I can do it without getting sick. And another part of me does it because it’s fun. Not the ride so much, but the look on my nephew’s face when that harness starts clacking down? That’s fun. His laughter and excitement, and his glorious eagerness to do it again? That’s fun. He’s six, and I was six once, and it makes me wonder what extravagant career choices he’ll make and remake as he grows up. Maybe he’ll want to be an astronaut some day, too. It might not be a rocket, but The Avalanche isn’t a bad place to start.