Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

Well, it was bound to happen. One of these films was not going to hold up. Though the weakest of the trilogy is still better than 99% of the genre entertainment we get thrown at us today, I may have grown past the appeal of The Return of the Jedi. I’m actually shocked at how A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back have grown in my esteem over the past twenty years. But it was probably asking too much to have the magic preserved through the entire trilogy.

As I mentioned before, I was a Return of the Jedi kid. Knowing what I do of childhood sensibilities, it is no wonder. Jedi has the most diverse and exhilarating battle scenes of any of the original films, and the fuzzy-wuzzy Ewoks (as Roger Ebert calls them) with their slapstick attacks on the Empire were perfect avatars for kids who envisioned themselves playing their own part in those battles. Sadly, the fantasy around the Ewoks has diminished and the epic battles, though awesome, look more and more like tent poles with no tent to support.

Yesterday’s viewing of Return of the Jedi stung a bit. I don’t hate the movie. I don’t even dislike the movie. However, when you consider how many moments in this movie I absolutely love, it seemed peculiar to get to the end and find that I didn’t love the film.

As I looked back over what I wrote about A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, I was surprised to find that I mentioned very little, if anything, about the Special Edition’s contributions to the trilogy. I neglected to mention the changes, because most of them didn’t bother me. Aside from the Greedo debacle, A New Hope’s touch-ups are mostly painless. Jabba’s cameo is still completely gratuitous, but at least it isn’t the eyesore it once was. Empire’s additions actually enhanced the film. The rewriting of the conversation between Vader and the Emperor did a wonderful job of tying the prequels to the original trilogy. I especially like that the Emperor refers to Luke as “the son of Anakin Skywalker.” They speak as though Anakin and Vader are two completely different people, a “certain point of view” that Obi-Wan Kenobi justifies in Jedi. But the conversation between Vader and the Emperor is the only narrative change to Empire. The rest of the changes equal touch-ups – cleaning up matte work, enhancing backgrounds; every frame on Bespin is absolutely gorgeous.

I wish Lucas could have executed the changes to Jedi with the delicacy of Empire, but Jedi’s updates are about as subtle as a slap across the face with a rotten salmon. The changes don’t service the story; they distract from it. In the worst of cases, Lucas savages both the pace of the film and some of our favorite characters at the same time. This nonsense starts early and digs in for the entirety of the film.

The beginning of Return of the Jedi is appropriately ominous. Coming out of the dark hold of Empire, the threat remains great. We learn that a new Death Star is well in the works and the conspicuously absent Emperor will finally appear in the flesh to oversee the final stages of its construction. R2-D2 and C-3PO are making the slow slog to Jabba’s palace, where Han Solo remains in carbon captivity. We hear that Lando and Chewbacca have already made the trip, but have not returned.

Jabba’s palace is one of the more wonderful environments in the trilogy. It is dark and dank and slimy, much like the gangster himself. Creatures lounge about the floor, staring out of the corners of their eyes, everyone suspicious of everyone, and everyone deeply fearful of the massive slug on the throne. Down in the catacombs, we’re taken to a droid torture chamber, with branding irons and a torture rack. This palace is saturated with blood, and death, and fear.

But apparently, in this dark environment, they like R&B. The promotion of Sy Snootles and the Max Rebo band from background characters who contribute to the wonderfully sinister ambiance of Jabba’s palace to in-your-face CGI monstrosities is emblematic of Lucas’ romance with enhanced special effects at the expense of atmosphere, pacing, or character. Who can take the threat of Jabba seriously after that completely gratuitous song-and-dance number? If Lucas wanted to stay true to Jabba’s character, he would have dropped that new mouthy furball into the Rancor pit. But it’s clear Lucas enjoys this little ditty. How do we know? Because he gives us extreme close-ups of these amped up lead singers, coming perilously close to Snootles’s glistening ruby red lips and bug eyes while we’re nearly swallowed by that other reject from the Honey Comb commercials. In case we might forget how annoying their presence is and how damaging these characters are to the tone of those opening scenes, Sy proceeds to go bug-eyed and squeal “Uh oh” when Jabba drops his dancer through the trapdoor.

But that isn’t all the damage Lucas does to the first third of the film, no. Despite my irritation with the overt “enhancement” of Max Rebo and Company, it is a brief cutaway that sticks with me the most. As we’re given a tour of the different creatures and conversations going on in the throne room, we cut to Boba Fett, that enigmatic loner who captured viewers’ attention with his aloof presence and silent nods. And what is Boba Fett doing? He’s surrounded by women, Snootles’s mutant back-up singers to be specific. They’re cooing over him as he gives one a gentle nudge to her chin.

WHAT!?!?

This is the character whose introduction to the Star Wars mythos involved Darth Vader, the most evil man in the galaxy, singling him out from a line of bounty hunters and ordering him to reign in his predilection for disintegration when he went after the Millenium Falcon. Boba Fett is a nasty man. He’s not Humphrey Bogart with a jetpack. This cutaway just disgusts me.

Once we leave Jabba’s palace, Lucas goes through most of the movie without contributing more flaws to the film. But he manages to add a whopper in the closing moments of the film. One of the iconic images of the trilogy – the blue apparitions of Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Anakin on Endor – is sapped of all its resonance as Sebastian Shaw, the original Anakin Skywalker, is replaced by Hayden Christensen.

I understand Lucas’s desire to tie his original trilogy back to the prequels, but this effort fails on so many levels it’s heartbreaking. First and foremost, Lucas exposes Christensen’s weakness as a performer placing him next to Alec Guinness. As hard as young Hayden tries, he doesn’t have the presence, the gravitas, needed from this very poignant moment. I don’t know who was giving him directions, but Christensen looks as though he just stepped out of the Jedi wardrobe room for the first time. His cheesy grin is that of a little boy dressing up for Halloween; I half expected him to say “Look Mom!” In the brief moments of screen time Sebastian Shaw had, he completely subtly embodied both the thankfulness of finally being freed from the dark side and his sadness over the atrocities he committed as Vader. Christensen looks like he would have high-fived Luke: “Thanks, dude. ‘preciate it.” I don’t know if this is true, but I have a feeling this was a spur of the moment decision. I don’t think Christensen is a bad actor, even if he was horribly miscast as Anakin. I figure Lucas had Christensen in front of one of his blue screens during Episode III filming, got the tickle for this idea, and told Hayden to just stand there for a moment. That would explain the fact that his eyes roam all over the place, where as Yoda and Obi-Wan are clearly focused on Luke, and why he has that ridiculous smile on his face. The only explanation for how awkward Christensen looks is that Lucas put him on the spot and never really told him what he was doing.

Still, even if the performance had been right Hayden Christensen should never have replaced Sebastian Shaw for one reason: age. Mark Hamill was an old 32 when he filmed Return of the Jedi. Hayden Christensen is still a young 24. Luke looks like he’s staring at his son, not his father. Hayden’s just a kid, and Hamill clearly is not. If Lucas were going to go with this, I don’t understand why he wouldn’t change Obi-Wan, as well. Put Ewan McGregor in as Obi-Wan’s youthful representation. Putting the green Christensen next to the veteran of all veterans, Alec Guinness, is so stupid it makes my head ache. There is a hilarious moment when Yoda and Obi-Wan turn to look at Anakin (now Christensen), and there’s a sense of Guinness looking at Hayden with a chuckle, as if he were singing in his head “One of these things is not like the other?” For those of us who have tried to separate the original trilogy from the prequels as much as possible, in our minds and our hearts, this final moment hurts quite a bit.

All right. Now that I got that all out of the way, I said at the beginning of this article that I don’t hate this movie, and despite that rather lengthy and enthusiastic diatribe, I say again that I don’t hate this movie. In fact, even with all his foibles Lucas hasn’t completely blinded me to the things that I loved about Jedi as a child.

Though I haven’t seen Episode III (it debuted at midnight last night), I am certain that the most emotionally charged and satisfying sequence of the Star Wars trilogy takes place in Return of the Jedi. When Luke hides beneath the steps in the Emperor’s throne room, and Vader stalks him within his mind, reading his fear and threatening to turn Leia, the fury and passion with which Luke goes after Vader is stirring. The long shot of Luke and Vader exchanging blows against the backdrop of an enormous window into space with John Williams’s score channeling Luke’s dark turn with a moaning choral arrangement is awe-inspiring. I cheer the feral aggression with which Luke pounds on the fallen Sith lord. Imagine what Episode II would have felt like had Hayden Christensen had the same ferocity when he dispatched the Tusken Raiders who killed his mother? Christensen’s glowering glare looks drama school next to Hamill Unleashed.

In all, I think the climax of Return of the Jedi is unmatched in terms of rollicking adventure. Ewoks get their fair share of hate from the masses, but I have absolutely no problem with them. In fact, I love the fact that the technological giant is defeated by archaic means like catapults and log rolls. There are a lot of inventive things going on during the battle of Endor, and unlike the battles in the prequels, single indelible moments like the AT-ST walker getting its head smashed between two swinging logs are given the viewers’ complete attention. Sure, it’s impressive how much goes on in the prequel battles, but how many individual moments stand out like those in Jedi?

The space battle in Jedi remains my favorite of the series. There are just enough fighters and frigates and star destroyers to be awe-inspiring, but not so many that it just becomes one big indistinct mess. The race through the Death Star adds a claustrophobic element to A New Hope’s tunnel chase. Not to mention, this is the first time where the Millenium Falcon finds itself at the center of a monumental space conflict. I could break this whole thing down into my favorite moments – like the A-wing going kamikaze through the bridge of the super star destroyer – but then this would just end up being a play-by-play of the entire exchange. Go watch the film and enjoy.

A special note deserves to be made regarding John Williams’s score during the climax of Jedi. Before CD came to the fore, I got a highlight audio tape of Star Wars music. The longest track on the tape was the scoring of the three-way battle at the end of Jedi. I completely wore it out. Each locale – outer space, Endor, the Death Star – had their own unique strains and themes and each one enhanced these scenes to a staggering degree. One could sense the tides of the battles turning through the most subtle cues in Williams’s music. Probably the best work he did for that galaxy far, far away.

I love the action in this film – the Sarlac pit, the battle on Endor, the final Vader/Luke battle. However, the weakness of this film is that there’s very little between those scenes to hold onto. Yoda’s death (“Forever sleep. Earned it I have.”) is remarkably poignant, but it feels like the only scene with real dramatic heft. So much talk of destiny surrounds Luke’s quest to confront Vader that it cuts out any sense of suspense. Unlike in Empire, Luke’s confidence never wavers and so neither does ours. We know he’ll win, and the story never forces us to question that certainty. I guess the conclusion is satisfying, but I think a talented writer could have had a little more fun leading up to it.

So, while the action and adventure is superior to its previous chapters, Jedi could have used a little of the dread that made Empire so compelling.

And now, it is on to the prequels. And to preview those three films, I want to offer this line of dialogue from Return of the Jedi that, for me, illustrates what is so lacking from them. Before Luke goes to confront Vader, Obi-Wan counsels him with this sad piece of advice:

“Bury your feelings deep down, Luke.”

Deep down, indeed.

Final Grade for Return of the Jedi: B

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Logic and science dictate that this is a complete fallacy, but I still stick by it. My earliest memory is of The Empire Strikes Back; specifically the AT-AT walkers storming across the frozen tundra of Hoth. Of course, Empire was released just four months after my birth, so it doesn’t seem likely that this memory is anything more than a delusion. But I stick by it. If I don’t, then I have nothing until my brother got the tip of his ring finger torn off. And who wants that?

Of all the Star Wars films, The Empire Strikes Back has gone through the greatest metamorphosis in terms of my appreciation. I was a Return of the Jedi kid. The first scenes with Jabba the Hutt and the finale with the Ewoks just played better for me than the dark, emotional turmoil of Empire. Aside from the opening battle on Hoth and the chase through the asteroid field, Empire lacked the abundance of action set pieces that the other installments had. For a young, adventurous boy, a character study of his sci-fi heroes just won’t cut it. But now that I am older and wiser, I can see how this film has shown to be the most fascinating of the entire franchise.

After the revelry that concluded A New Hope, one would expect to find the Empire on its heels as the next chapter begins. Instead, the assault on the Death Star appears to have been a grand hit and run, as the Rebellion finds itself chased to the most remote parts of the galaxy by an awakened Empire. To make sure the dire direction of this next chapter is not underestimated, our hero, Luke Skywalker is ambushed and bloodied by an extremely nasty wampa within the first five minutes of the film.

Inside the cramped, cold chambers of the rebel base, things are just as grim. The plucky, sassy grin of Princess Leia has been replaced with a much more grim countenance. Han Solo is packing up after, we’re told, a foreboding exchange with a bounty hunter between films. The looks exchanged between Han and Leia during the imparting of this news speaks of a greater, sadder history that went unseen after the Death Star’s destruction. We know how these people came to know each other, but right off the bat it is clear that many more hardships have brought them closer together.

Leia and Han’s banter in the hallway is the type of exchange that is sorely missed in the prequel trilogy. Han’s expectation of a heartfelt good-bye is spoiled by Leia’s like-minded hard-headedness, but he does his best to drag it out of her.

“What’s the matter? Afraid I was gonna leave without giving you a good-bye kiss?”

“I’d just as soon kiss a wookie.”

“I can arrange that.”

This dialogue is sharp and witty and is only bettered by the performances of Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher. I guarantee nothing comes close to matching this interplay in Episode I or II. I have suspicions about why this is, but I’ll leave that until I review the prequels again.

One of the more interesting strengths of Star Wars has been its vehicle design, and never is this more apparent than in the opening scenes on Hoth. The most notable example would be the Millenium Falcon, who Han Solo commonly refers to as “Baby.” The Millenium Falcon is so much a part of the cast that she should have a place in the credits. I was so fond of the Falcon as a character that when Kevin J. Anderson decided it might be cool to destroy it in his Star Wars novel, Jedi Search, I stopped reading the Star Wars books. In Empire, the Falcon shows more dynamics as a character than many of the actors in the prequel trilogy. She’s broke down half the time, nearly electrocuting Han during repairs. When Han turns the ship on and it quickly shuts down again, he gives her a swift smack and she comes back alive, like somebody who’s struggling to come out of a nap. The futile revving noise that follows the attempts to engage the hyperdrive reminds us of a struggling automobile, but there’s also something strangely human about it.

Almost matching the Falcon in its character are the rambling AT-AT walkers. Many of Lucas’ vehicle creations resemble animals; the AT-AT walkers like some giant metal dinosaur with laser cannons for fangs and droopy windows for eyes. My favorite moment in the ice battle has one of these awesome creatures rearing back on its haunches just a bit and twisting to the side to take out a Rebel speeder that is coming at it from an awkward angle. Up until that point in the battle, the walkers merely soldiered forward, occasionally swinging their heads one way or another, but here they looked quite agile, like a living creature. It makes Lucas’ universe that much more organic and alive.

But of course, when it comes to mechanical creations exuding life, one can’t continue without mentioning R2-D2 and C-3PO. Both droids in Empire are given impressive tasks and they handle both with aplomb. And I don’t mean tasks within the plot, I mean tasks as performers in an ensemble.

C-3PO gets in his fair share of comedic moments, but they differ completely from his “What a drag” nonsense in Episode II. If the genius writing of Episode II had been transplanted into Empire, we likely would have seen Threepio moaning about how “broken up” he was about being blasted to pieces. But Threepio’s performance in Empire was about character, not horrible puns. The prissy English butler came out in spades as Chewbacca tried the best he could to repair the dismantled droid. But the poor wookie just couldn’t do it right, putting Threepio’s head on backwards and blinding him for a moment. Of course, Goldenrod points each mistake out with his usual aristocratic panache. These are great moments that help diffuse the darker tones of the film. Perhaps his best moments come when Artoo reunites with the gang and Threepio, upset about his horrible view during the firefight, updates his counterpart on their quest to rescue Han from Boba Fett. It’s so casual and direct and funny coming from a droid who one episode ago was decrying Artoo’s adventurous spirit. “No more adventures,” he had said, but good old Threepio seems to be getting into the swing of things, and it is a delight to watch.

R2-D2 steals nearly every scene he’s in, whether it be swimming joyfully through the swamp waters of Dagobah or getting up on his tiptoes to peek in Yoda’s window. Even a slapstick moment like confusing an electrical socket for a computer input plays well (without drawing attention to itself or distracting from the urgency of the plot). And who would have ever thought that the Jedi Master and a plucky blue droid would be such perfect foils for each other. My favorite comedic moment in the film is Yoda and Artoo’s scuffle over the penlight.

Yoda’s appearance in Empire probably benefits the most from the prequels. After watching Yoda throw down with Count Dooku, his moments of concealed identity are so much more interesting and much funnier. I can’t believe in the eight years since I’ve watched Empire, I forgot Yoda’s laugh. My God! His entire personality comes through in that laugh. Sure it’s interesting that he’s small and green and yet powerful. But that laugh. It brings the whole package together. And yet, I can’t remember Yoda laughing once during the prequels. I know that the prequels have a darker purpose underneath them, but the fact that Yoda can go from yelling “Mine! Mine!” at Artoo while hitting him with his cane to “That is why you fail” when Luke underestimates his master is proof that you can show Yoda’s seriousness while still allowing that quirky personality to come through.

Yoda in Empire also typifies my troublesome relationship with computer graphics versus physical effects. Part of me, no matter how savvy I have become about film production, refuses to believe this propaganda about Yoda being a puppet. No, I still believe he came down out of his mansion in Beverly Hills to film his spot in Empire, then went back to enjoy the quiet life away from the press, like Carson – or Brando without the crazy. Sure he walked kind of funny and had a little bit of a lazy eye thing going on, but for Christ’s sake people – he’s 800 years old. Even Oprah will be struggling at that age.

When I accept that Yoda doesn’t exist, I much prefer his bumbling, lazy-eyed incarnation to his not-quite-right CGI manifestation. Sure, I enjoyed his throwdown with Dooku as much as anybody, but in a way it broke my heart. That sort of thing seemed beneath the Yoda of Empire. Yoda didn’t whip out a lightsaber to awe young Luke. No, he closed his eyes, raised his hand and lifted Luke’s X-Wing out of the moat. While people cheered for Yoda’s lightsaber reveal, one was left speechless by his quiet display of power in Empire. I may be the only one who would prefer to be awed than cheaply thrilled.

Yoda’s goofy introduction to the Star Wars universe also forced me to consider the dramatic implications of the saga’s order. If Star Wars had been revealed to the public in chronological order, what would it mean for certain characters and most specifically, what would it mean for our feelings for the Jedi?

For me, the major difference between the Original Trilogy and the Prequel Trilogy lies with the Jedi. The Original Trilogy did not belong to the Jedi. Luke is a revolutionary, truly his father’s son. He puts aside his Jedi training when he learns his friends may be in trouble. The Jedi Council would have frowned upon such brash and emotional actions. We can see Yoda and Obi-Wan battling with their old school values, the ones that eventually caused the downfall of the Jedi. In Return of the Jedi, when Yoda tells Luke “No more training do you require” we can see that the teaching he once used is outdated. The destruction of the Jedi Temple showed how arrogant and rigid the Jedi had been. And perhaps the heart that so defined Luke and Anakin may be the way the Jedi need to turn. It is clear that they still fear this revolution, but they relent with nothing but faith and hope to guide them. This is not the philosophy of the Jedi in the prequels. In a way, they are fundamentalists, literalists, purists to a religion that has yet to show its flaws. The original trilogy has been trumpeted for its new age spiritualism, but I would argue that the prequels are a cautionary tale about what happens when one believes in the infallibility of one’s faith. I’ll expand on this when I get to those films.

At about the time that Yoda pulled Luke’s X-Wing from the water, I stopped taking notes. I just watched. The laptop stayed on my lap. I was prepared to take notes. I just didn’t. For the first time in my life, I got to absorb The Empire Strikes Back in all of its dark, punishing glory. Han Solo gets sent to Jabba in a nice carbon-wrapped package. Luke loses a hand just before his entire worldview is crushed. And once again I wish that I could have seen this film for the first time when I was old enough to have the wind taken out of me by those fateful words “I am your father.” But if surprise is lacking, at least I can now fully appreciate the scope of this story like never before. Vader’s identity means more now that we can look back and see the long history that lead up to that earth-shattering moment. It is powerful stuff. Pretty impressive for “pop entertainment.”

Most impressive.

Final Grade for The Empire Strikes Back: A+

Star Wars: A New Hope

People like to ask film majors what their favorite movie is. The question got more difficult as my film history became deeper and more prolific. But for most of my life, Star Wars was the easy answer. Even when the pop culture phenom met with scorn and derision in my film school environs, my answer remained the same (whether I vocalized it or not).

One would think that my allegiance to that galaxy far, far away would translate to thousands of viewings over the years. While I’m sure I burned out my fair share of VHS copies through grade school, when I reached high school I felt less and less inclined to revisit the great Empire/Rebellion slugfest. Then, after learning of the notorious home video practice of Pan and Scan, I refused to watch those videos that cut my film frame in half. That cut Star Wars completely out of my regular viewing loop. After DVD arrived (with Star Wars notoriously absent) I swore off motion pictures in any other format. No more VHS. No more TV. I even snuck out of my film classes, because of their inexplicably poor screening standards. Video projected onto a screen is still video.

But I also avoided Star Wars for another reason. Specifically, I was afraid it might not hold up. Holding Star Wars in as high esteem as I do, I was terrified that the cornerstone of my imaginative evolution as a child might be bankrupt in my mid-20’s. I used the format issues as an excuse, bolstering my distance from the films, but the fear of disappointment was truly the cornerstone of my neglect.

I just finished watching A New Hope for the first time since 1997, when the Special Edition’s were released in theaters. That’s over eight years. My senior year of high school, four years of college, and three years of freelance personal growth have passed since the last time I saw Princess Leia’s transport run down by an Imperial Star Destroyer. Eight years since I had seen the twin suns set over Tatooine. Eight years since I heard Han Solo’s “Yahoo!” seconds before the Death Star bit the stardust. Eight years of worrying if the original trilogy would hold up.

Well, as John Williams’ score climaxed and our noble heroes turned to face the applause of their Rebellion allies, I had tears in my eyes. About a year ago, in a momentous admission, I told my mother that I felt The Lord of the Rings trilogy had surpassed Star Wars in my heart as the greatest films I have ever seen. While I still believe that The Lord of the Rings films may be the greatest cinematic achievement in history, Star Wars touched a place in my heart that can only be reached in those early, innocent years of life. I haven’t watched Empire or Jedi yet, but I’m already reneging on Star Wars’ dethronement. Those films will always rule in my heart.

Each of these films has their own unique backstories. For me, A New Hope is the most interesting. When it exploded into the culture in 1977, I was a distant twinkle in my parents’s eye. Star Wars would have three years to latch onto the public consciousness before I burst onto this mortal coil, just five months before The Empire Strikes Back dropped its genealogical bombshell on the fans. I would grow up neck deep in Star Wars lore, but I didn’t realize until 1997 that I had never seem the original Star Wars on the big screen.

The opening of A New Hope is the stuff of legend. I have heard more recollections of it than any other moment of film. The one I enjoyed most was my Uncle Robert’s. At Christmas after Episode I debuted, he told me about going to see A New Hope on a first date with his wife:

“So, we’re watching, and there’s the planet below, and we’re like ‘Oh. That’s kind of cool.’ And then you see these lasers flying and this ship comes on the screen. And we’re like ‘Huh. That’s really cool.’ THEN, this huge ship flies over the screen and we’re like ‘HOLY SHIT!’”

If I have one regret in my Star Wars experience, it is that I was not yet old enough to appreciate the magnitude of this opening shot. It is a problem I have had many times in my film education. Films that broke ground years ago won’t resonate with a young kid who was born into a film industry that has already made those innovations hackneyed. It is impossible to appreciate the Holy Shit magnitude of that Star Destroyer rumbling into frame because for me that’s how films have always been.

When the Special Editions arrived in the late 90’s, I did get a watered down sense of awe when I experienced those opening moments on the big screen for the very first time. I temper my jealousy of my aunts and uncles “live” viewing by convincing myself that the quality of my first big screen presentation far outmatched theirs. A restored/enhanced print on opening night. A 1000 seat theater. THX digital surround sound. Not to mention, after growing up with Star Wars in 4:3 dimensions, the scale of that Star Destroyer was as awe-inspiring as it must have been then. All my elder relatives have over me now is the surprise of it, the sense of discovery about it.

After enjoying my night with the Star Wars Special Edition, it would be another eight years before I would experience A New Hope again. Two more Special Editions, God knows how many VHS versions, and two prequels would cross my path before I forced myself to watch the original Star Wars again… just a matter of hours ago.

I’m not a prequel apologist. I found Episode I and II deeply flawed (I’ll get into them later), and my tepid reaction to the both of them had me quivering with fear as I put my A New Hope DVD into my player for the first time. Had I grown past Star Wars? Would it no longer appeal to me as a grown man? Would I find the films that shaped my youth as inaccessible as the prequels to those films?

In a word, no. In fact, watching Star Wars this most recent time was like watching it completely new. And that had nothing to do with Lucas’ incessant updates.

It’s interesting how vague my enjoyment of these films seemed as a youth. There were images I latched on to. And scenes. But as far as understanding the major arc of these films, it never played a role in the thrills they gave me. I wanted to be in those swinging chairs with the guns on them. I wanted to shoot Storm Troopers into bottomless chasms. I wanted stuff to come to me with the lift of a hand. It was all quite superficial; such are the minds of children.

I remember dialogue as if it were musical notes, rather than actual words. That’s probably why I can still whistle R2-D2’s “lines” as accurately as the rest of the script. The words I understood, of course I remembered. The words that I didn’t know, I learned phonetically. “Delusions of grandeur.” I remember learning that one phonetically. I used to say it all the time just because I liked the sound of it. It had a flow, like music. So I went about the house saying delusions of grandeur like I had a clue. Everybody had delusions of grandeur. My dad had delusions of grandeur. My brother had delusions of grandeur. The toaster had delusions of grandeur.

Star Wars was a completely visceral experience in those years, but it was more than that when I watched it this afternoon. Part of that comes with 20-some years of life. And part of that, to Lucas’ credit, came from the knowledge I gained from the prequels.

Having not seen Episode III yet, I can’t say whether it makes Episode I and II better films, but I’m certain that the three prequels have given the original trilogy a much darker context, one we likely would have understated without those other three films.

As a writer myself, I am curious about how much of the prequel story Lucas had in his mind when production on Episode IV began. I know from the Making Of documentaries that the secret of Vader’s true identity remained a secret until Empire premiered, even from Mark Hamill himself. But after watching A New Hope again, I think one cast member was in on the secret from the very beginning.

With my expanded knowledge of film history, it boggles the mind how Lucas landed Sir Alec Guinness for Obi-Wan Kenobi. In fact, after seeing Doctor Zhivago and Bridge on the River Kwai and Kind Hearts and Coronets (he played seven different characters people and not in a Mike Myers, bad make-up kind of way) when I finally see Obi-Wan’s reveal, when he softly removes his hood to gaze over at R2-D2 (and us) I end up slapping my forehead – Oh that’s right! Alec Guinness is Obi-Wan!

And watching this film over again, finally at an age where I can appreciate the scope of the story, Guiness’ performance – and in turn the character of Obi-Wan Kenobi – has become the most fascinating element of the Star Wars mythos for me. Guinness takes what could have been a frightfully dull supporting part, one whose main service to the story is exposition, and gave us a foreboding conduit to the dark ages of the Clone Wars and the rise of the Empire.

Watch Guinness when he hears his rightful name spoken for the first time in two decades. It takes the air from his lungs. The weight of his painful history jumps right back onto his shoulders as he lowers himself onto the rock behind him. Watch Guinness when Luke asks about his father. He leans forward, the tale congealing in his mind… and then he hesitates. When Star Wars debuted in 1977, it may have looked like the line had slipped his mind. We had no knowledge of Vader’s real identity. But now that we do, the entire tale of Anakin Skywalker is wrapped in that half-second pause, that slight shift of the eyes. And then the lie.

There’s a history there that we never could have truly appreciated had it not been for the prequels. As I said, a lot of that history comes through in Guinness’ performance, but there are other indicators of the galaxy’s difficult past right up there on the screen.

Let me say this about the prequel trilogy. They are very pretty. Naboo is damn near utopian in its lush foliage and striking marble architecture. The Original Trilogy is not pretty. It is scarred and dirty and ugly. And it is all the better for it. I love seeing R2 and C-3P0 for the first time in A New Hope. Just look at them for a moment. Artoo is scratched and filthy. Threepio has a ding on his noggin and one leg doesn’t match the other. And even Vader, when he makes his first walk through the hall of dead fighters, is not looking his best.

I know the argument can be made that the prequels took place in a time before the war and the Empire, so they aren’t going to look battle-scarred and derelict. That is a valid argument, but for me it isn’t just about aesthetics. For me, the filth and grime are about presence.

Too much of the prequel trilogy looks (and is) manufactured. It is designed, constructed, and created in a computer. And despite all of Lucas’ technology, he has yet to convince me (even during the course of the movie) that I’m looking at someplace I could physically go. In the Original Films, the actors are on sets or on location, and that has a strong effect on the imagination. I still feel like Tatooine is someplace I could find if I had the means. Hoth, too. And Dagobah. But Naboo? I know that came out of a computer. No sense looking for that.

And no, I’m not a hardline traditionalist who won’t embrace the digital revolution. But while actors may talk up blue-screen work as “challenging,” their performances consistently trip over the trickery. Sets, especially in science fiction, give the actors context. They give them story. They give them presence. I hear interviews with actors after working on a film like Star Wars saying “I was just staring at a ping pong ball on a stick and was told ‘That’s where the monster is at’ and I had to make up the monster in front of me.” Well, that’s just fuckin’ stupid. Standing on concrete in front of a blank screen staring at a ping pong ball. That’s sure to inspire the actors to new heights. We’ve removed every bit of creative assistance from the prequel actors. Sure the monsters weren’t ever really there. But I’m certain if Luke didn’t have the Rancor, he had its cavernous lair. He had the sand and bones at his feet. That gives context. That gives presence, something that can be felt in every frame of A New Hope. Han Solo looks familiar with the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon because Harrison Ford could sit in the chairs and push the buttons and work the controls. That sort of familiarity is lacking from the prequel trilogy.

All right. I’m getting off track.

Watching A New Hope at 25, I appreciated the things, filmmaking things, that I couldn’t have appreciated even five years ago. I worried that I would find Star Wars lacking in my new maturity. In fact, I found it to be a much richer experience than I ever could have imagined. Alec Guinness’ performance came to life in a new way. I found myself shocked by the number of extraordinary set pieces crammed into the film; the attack on the escaping Millenium Falcon may be one of the most tightly edited action sequences in the history of film. And I never get tired of feeling the goosebumps rising on my arms when the Millenium Falcon makes its triumphant return during the Death Star battle. All the elements of the Star Wars films – story, character, dialogue, special effects, editing, score – come together in a perfect thirty seconds of film that culminates with the (new and, yes improved) explosion of the Death Star.

But to finish up this retrospective, I wanted to give special attention to George Lucas’ original screenplay for Episode IV. It may seem absurd after the stilted exchanges we’ve had to endure in the prequels, but Lucas’ screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award in 1977 (it lost to Annie Hall). What’s more, it deserved it.

As far as storyline goes, there is not an ounce of fat on A New Hope. The major arc is this – Princess Leia gives R2-D2 a message to find Obi-Wan Kenobi and give him the technical readouts of the Death Star. Every scene to follow will tie directly to this major arc. And when I consider the various scenes and events that Lucas ties so tightly to this simple thread – Mos Eisley, the garbage shoot, the TIE fighter attack, and the final Death Star run – I can’t help but admire this magnificently trim and tight story. Even scenes that might seem superfluous (Mos Eisley and the garbage shoot come to mind) serve very specific functions within the story.

I never thought in a million years (or at least in the past ten) that I would find a Star Wars screenplay such a helpful example of strong, epic storytelling. Yet as I embark on my own series of fantasy novels, I’m certain to return to A New Hope for inspiration and instruction.

I can’t wait to watch Empire.

P.S. Greedo shooting first still sucks.

Final Grade for A New Hope: A

The Man on Putney Hill

A week ago I used my employee discount to buy every H.G. Wells book Books a Million carried for less than fifteen dollars. Quite the gold mine if you ask me. With a new adaptation of The War of the Worlds on the way, I figured it would be the best book to start with. Here are some of my thoughts and observations regarding the book, and I’m curious to hear what others remember of reading it.

*** I can’t remember the last book I read that used dialogue so sparsely. Of course, this is natural when the protagonist finds himself isolated through much of the book. Nevertheless, it made a two-hundred page novel seem like a 500 page novel, despite the moments of page-turning intrigue.

*** I was shocked that a book written over a century ago seemed so accessible to a modern reader in terms of its prose. This marks the second “classic” novel I’ve read in the past several months (the other being Frankenstein) that didn’t turn off my deeply ingrained 21st century sensibility. It makes me extremely excited to read the rest of Wells’ offerings.

*** While the story lagged when the narrator became trapped in a demolished building, the last several chapters made me think about this book for the past several days; part of the reason I’m writing this is to get it out of my head after dwelling on it.

The seventh chapter of Part II is called The Man on Putney Hill. In this chapter, a recently freed and roaming narrator encounters a rifleman who he met earlier in the story. The rifleman confronts our dazed hero telling him to accept that they cannot match the technology and firepower of the Martians. He explains, quite eloquently, how mankind is no longer the prime occupant of Earth. The rifleman believes that mankind can persevere beneath the radar, within the tunnels below London, until they can learn enough to revolt against the Martians by turning their weapons against them.

As the rifleman’s plan unfolded, I found myself both interested and rationally drawn-in. The plan was both well thought out and executable. If the plan had a flaw, it was its coldness. It required mankind relinquishing its crown on the world stage and proceeding with survival being the main priority. “The meek shall inherit the Earth” goes right out the window in this new world. The strong will be responsible for the future of mankind. The weak are not capable of carrying such weight on their shoulders. Despite this coldness, I was engaged by his considerations of the future. Of course, since I see my universe as “vast and cool and unsympathetic,” I would naturally follow the rational basis for the rifleman’s plan.

But the narrator does not. In the concluding paragraph of the chapter, our humble narrator finds himself put off by the nihilistic viewpoint volunteered by the rifleman and deserts him, his decision bolstered by nothing but hope. The narrator felt he was betraying his wife and mankind by accepting defeat at the hands of the Martians. To him, wandering through the world in the hopes of better days (with no idea how they might come about) was the way to proceed with life. My reaction to this was two-fold: First, as a reader I felt ashamed, as the narrator did, for accepting the rifleman’s dark future. I admired the narrator’s idealism and courage (no matter how intellectually bankrupt it was) as he walked out into an uncertain future. The other part of me, the writer, was curious. The idea of a long, patient wait for the opportune moment of Martian weakness seemed an adequate and interesting way to go. When the narrator left at the end of the chapter, I was curious to see how the book would resolve itself.

The answer is unsatisfactorily. Before I even picked up this book I was familiar with the resolution – a terrestrial virus kills the invading Martian army. So, it wasn’t that aspect of the plot that irked me. The narrator, a scientific, philosophical man finds himself on his knees thanking God as the Martian army is killed and he is reunited with his wife, whom he had assumed dead. Faith seemed to be of little importance to the narrator in the book, so to find him praising the Lord at its conclusion is a rather unconvincing character arc. More importantly, the God as dues ex machina concludes a suspenseful novel with a shrug of the shoulders. Stephen King employed the same atrocious methods to his opus The Stand, as did Poe in The Pit and Pendulum. Both works left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

The philosophical quandaries exposed by the rifleman are much more compelling than the rescue from divine origins. What is man’s place in the world? Is it possible that we could be as ants to another species advanced beyond us? What would our sense of the species become if we were to find that the universe was not created just for us? Could we move on? How would we move on?

As the book concludes, the narrator has a vague sense of these questions, but is not forced to confront them because of God’s miraculous intervention. The bow-tied conclusion undercuts the ideas presented throughout the book. I often wonder if my lack of faith often comes out of this simplicity. Explaining tragedies and blessings equally as God’s will feels both minimalist and incongruous. And often time it rescues us from asking the deeper, darker questions that itch just beneath the surface. I’m curious to see if this summer’s film will ditch the divine hand for its conclusion. It could make the difference in my opinion of the film, as it did with this book.

Ten Can't-Miss Summer Films

In February, I couldn’t remember being this excited about a summer movie season since… hell, I don’t remember. Probably never. For a while there it looked like prime time for film entertainment would begin early, with Sin City opening the first week of April. But alas, I found the film worth seeing, but ultimately one-note and underwhelming for a young man who thought it would revolutionize the industry.

But now that we’re diving into May, the summer movie season is now within reach, and I felt it a good time to offer a list of the ten films I am most looking forward to. As these films come out, I’ll be here with a review so we can see how close my predictions are to these films’ actual worth.

10 – The Fantastic Four (July 8)

The only reason this film is on the list is for what I would call the Trainwreck Factor, because that is what I foresee for this film. With news that the script is based on the Ultimates line of comics (a modern reinterpretation) and an unproven action director (Tim Story’s last film was Barbershop), this film looks like it is set to end up on the downside of Marvel adaptations. The two most interesting characters in the franchise – The Thing and Dr. Doom – look horrible in the previews. Doom looks like something out of Power Rangers and Thing looks like a brick with down syndrome. Not to mention despite her exotic looks and sex appeal, Jessica Alba has yet to show me anything compelling as an actress. Chris Evans’ Human Torch will probably make him a movie star, because so far his is the only personality that seems to stand out. I had to put this film on the list out of curiosity, but that’s why it’s number 10.

9 – The Brothers Grimm (July 29)

I haven’t seen a single frame of this film, but I am really looking forward to it based on the concept alone. Of course it helps that Terry Gilliam (12 Monkeys) is involved. His films, even at their worse, are interesting. The story involves two mideval con-artist siblings who go from village to village convincing the townsfolk of demons threatening their well-being. They then offer their services as ghostbusters to finish off the demons for a small fee. All goes well until they reach a village that may actually have a threatening beast in their midst. Matt Damon and Heath Ledger play the Grimms, and after the Bourne and Ocean films, Damon is quickly becoming one of my favorite performers out there.

8 – Madagascar (May 27)

Another Dreamworks animation extravaganza about zoo animals who escape into the wild. Nothing much more to it that that, except penguin assassins. That was a long explanation to get to the one selling point. Penguin assassins. That’s enough for me.

7 – The Island (July 22)

This one hurts to have on my list. I hate Michael Bay with the fire of a thousand suns. Aside from The Rock (which I still have to justify enjoying) his films give me a headache while they destroy everything I like about film. Expect lots of quick cuts, egregious slow-motion, and senseless posturing. Still, Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson star, and the plot (way too complicated to try and detail here) seems intriguing enough. I’m giving Bay this one chance (mainly because I want to see Johansson as an action star), but if this one sucks I’m done with him.

6 – Mr. and Mrs. Smith (June 10)

The two most beautiful people in the world. The director of Go, Swingers, and the Bourne Identity. All that sexual tension that’s been spilled all over the tabloids. This is another film that might have a hint of the Trainwreck Factor, but I think it’s bound to be one of the most fun flicks of the summer.

5 – Bad News Bears (July 22)

Usually, I’m not a comedy guy. I usually catch a handful of comedies a year that really work for me. I think Bad News Bears is going to be one of the select few. Billy Bob Thorton plays a curmudgeonly bastard like nobody in the business (see Bad Santa), and this film is likely to be what Hardball didn’t have the, forgive the pun, balls to be. Richard Linklater, the mind behind Dazed and Confused, seems like a perfect match for this film. And with Greg Kinnear, a master of nasty smarm, playing foil to Thorton, I’m dying to see this in all of its R-rated glory.

4 – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (July 15)

Anybody who has seen this trailer has had the same reaction: WTF? Tim Burton is unhinged, brilliantly so. Johnny Depp is unhinged, brilliantly so. And they both seem to make each other MORE unhinged, brilliantly so. So even with Depp’s effeminate hair cut, pasty white skin, and abnormally large shiny white teeth, one has to think there is some sort of brilliance to be had here. Dahl’s original book has wonderfully dark undertones, and these two artists are sure to bring that to the fore. Besides, it’s Tim Burton’s Chocolate Factory. Need I say more?

3 – Batman Begins (June 15)

My reaction to this film went thusly. Heard Christopher Nolan was doing a new version of Batman, based on the comic series Batman: Year One. Happy. Heard Christian Bale was playing the Dark Knight. Interested. Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Katie Holmes, Ken Watanabe, Liam Neeson, Tom Wilkinson, and Cillian Murphy joined the cast. Tremendous. Saw the first trailer. Eh. Saw the second trailer. Boring. What are they doing. Saw the last trailer! FINALLY! THIS IS GOING TO ROCK! I don’t know what those teasers were doing, but the final trailer revealed more of the story, a look at a cracked-out Batmobile, tons of Batman iconography, a look at the Scarecrow, and some fire-breathing horse (WTF?). It is the second best trailer I’ve seen this year, next to the War of the Worlds ads. Since I’m certainly more of a Batman guy than a Superman guy, I’m very excited about the darkest of superheroes getting the treatment he deserves.

2 – War of the Worlds (June 29)

If not for 25 years of anticipation, this movie would be number one. No other film has touched a nerve with me like this one has. End of the world stories fascinate me, and this one looks like it pulls no punches. The terror on Tom Cruise’s face and Dakota Fanning’s sobbing horror punctuated by Spielberg’s startling imagery seems like this movie is headed towards a type of horror film that has never been done. This doesn’t seem cute. It doesn’t seem clever. It seems to be going straight for the jugular. I’m betting money that people walking out of this film will spend the next several days looking towards the sky. And I assure you nobody will ever see an approaching thunderstorm the same way again.

1 – The Revenge of the Sith

Duh. We knew this was going to be number one. But I have more to say about this one than this space (or the time I have before I go to work) allow. So sometime before this film debuts, I’ll give my treatise on the Star Wars franchise and its place in my development. Until then, take a look at this list and start marking your calendars. This summer has the potential to be one of the best in a very long time.

All About the Steak

“The great thing about baseball is when you're done, you'll only tell your grandchildren the good things.”
-- Sparky Anderson


About a month ago, I entered the bookstore on a Friday. I wasn’t working, but I came in to write in seclusion from the media (television, internet) that so commonly exacerbates my writer’s blocks. The first thing I spotted upon entrance was a particular feature display dead in the middle of the drive aisle.

The first two, single shelves cradled the fresh-from-the-printers hardcover Juiced, by Jose Canseco. The cover resembled a baseball card though Canseco’s unaffiliated jersey and helmet, marked only with his number, 33, perfectly symbolized his allegiance to himself rather than any particular ballclub. A star precedes the title, perhaps a satirical asterisk added by the designer, referring to the career statistics that descend from the corner.

That week’s Sports Illustrated filled out the display. When my eyes fell on Stephen Wilkes’ cover photograph, I was overcome by a sour melancholy. It nearly brought me to tears. The picture was simple. No digital trickery involved here. But it was the subject that made me ache: The Field of Dreams. No other symbol of the game, including the lush green ivy of Wrigley Field, will ever resonate with me like that field does. The final exchange of dialogue in that film breaks me every time. And not in a manly, grit my teeth and maybe a tear will escape sort of way. I devolve into a blithering infant every time Kevin Costner utters that line:

“Hey, dad? You wanna have a catch?”

Oh man. Give me a moment.

Seeing that humble field in Dyersville, Iowa captioned with “Broken Dreams” tugged every heartstring I had. But I kept it together long enough to pull a copy off the rack, and find a secluded table where I could peruse Gary Smith’s article “What Do We Do Now?” on the congressional steroid hearings. In the article, Smith phoned and interviewed a few dozen various devotees of the game (from an unnamed Sunday school teacher, to Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, to Hank Aaron, Jr.), asking what this new scandal has done to their love of the game.

I read the article with interest, but kept the proper perspective on the answers offered; as thoughtful as many of the answers were, they were all, nevertheless, knee-jerk reactions to a news event that occurred only days, if not hours before. I did not want my consideration of this topic to fall under the purview of rash castigation (or woe or justification), so I waited only a few days, for the first pitch of the regular season.

That’s all it took. One pitch and I had my answer.

Only in Spring Training could Gary Smith have pulled off an article filled with such loss and sorrow. I don’t blame him. The article was an immediate response to what felt like a bitter disappointment, if not embarrassment, for many a baseball fan. I bought that issue of Sports Illustrated. I wanted to have it in case the sky did fall on baseball. But all it took was one pitch, and I pitched it into the wastebasket.

I cannot overemphasize the head-shaking that cramped my neck for days after watching home run savoir Mark McGwire’s over-coached heming and hawing, introducing his carefully crafted platitude “I’m not here to talk about the past. I’m here to be positive about this issue” into the annals of inanity. You can only slap your forehead so many times before your eyes go crossed, and I had a good start on it after enduring ESPN’s sound-byte record-setting over the next week.

But twenty games into the regular season, it all seems so – as Big Mac would say – in the past. With Steinbrenner shitting bricks about his basement dwelling Yanks, the Cubs showing the Red Sox what a curse REALLY looks like, and teams like the Dodgers, ChiSox, and Orioles blowing past many experts’s expectations, a few measly weeks quickly reminded me why that corn-cut field in Dyersville carries such reverence.

Spring Training sometimes causes us to forget the raomance of the game just as it reminds us of the promise to come. The circus of the steroid controversy could only have cast such a dark cloud during this transition stage. The regular season is the main course, and when you’re busy drooling over the juicy steak of division rivalries, the last thing on your mind is how dry the breadsticks were.

Welcome to the regular season boys and girls. Dig in.

The Gate Opens and The Horse Breaks a Leg

I walk this empty street
On the boulevard of broken dreams.

I walk alone.
I walk alone.
-- Green Day

I’ve come to believe it takes a particular strength of character to learn from past mistakes while avoiding the pitfalls of regret that are so abundant in each of our personal histories. In recent days I found myself navigating a particularly nasty minefield of should-haves and could-haves as I dug for the roots of the most glorious failure in my quarter century of life.

A little less than a year ago I set off on a quest. My treasure? A Master’s degree in creative writing. The end goal was – and is – a writing career, but a return to school seemed the most sensible first step for my reinvigorated passion. Unfortunately, my new determination did little to endear me to the application committees of the four universities I courted, and early last week I got my final rejection letter from my Alma Mater, Southern Illinois University. As if the rejection itself was not a swift enough kick to the unmentionables, I actually got my denial over e-mail after writing the office of admissions to inquire about my application’s status. They apparently thought so little of my wooing that they couldn’t sacrifice the Xerox toner for my notification. Or maybe it was the 34 cents for the stamp. I can’t say.

So after my inspired escape from my demoralizing Quad City employ, my southern migration, and my head first charge into the grad school application process, I come out on the other end with a few grand less in my bank account and a myriad of questions about my next pursuit. I put so much of my heart and time into this one goal that when it didn’t come to fruition I felt a little like a horse at the Kentucky Derby that breaks his leg in its first step out of the gate. My ambitious agenda, careful planning, and diligent work-ethic put me right back where I started. Or at least, a thousand miles away in exactly the same predicament.

Thanks to the wonderfully vacuous rejection letters from my dream schools, I am left with no clue about whether my continued pursuit of a Master’s degree would be a wise decision. Without an English Degree (though an approximation of one on my transcript), I wonder if I automatically begin the application process with two strikes against me; and I’ll swing at anything with two strikes. Since the rejections tell me nothing about my qualifications and my inquiries into the strengths or weaknesses of my application met with more inane refusals, I’m reluctant to sign up for another round of that horrible process when it could be a futile endeavor to begin with.

In considering this failing, I found it hard not to look back on my years in college (and the years after them) and then kick myself repeatedly in the ass for the blunders I made. This is the minefield that I speak of. If I had started pursuing my Creative Writing minor a semester sooner, I could have had it completed when I graduated instead of ending up a class shy. If I had leapt immediately into grad school I would not have needed to fall back on a family friend and former football coach (God bless you for doing it though, Vic) for a letter of recommendation. Any number of other college opportunities (Studio A Playhouse and my internship at NBC, for example) I largely took for granted. I seemed to float through them, dazed, instead of bleeding them for every advantage and experience I could.

A matter of years ago, I would have been so wrapped up in these traps of regret and self-destruction that I’d be inclined to take a backwards step into one. Instead, I’ve studied the minefield for patterns and found the most promising path ahead.

And that most promising path seems to be a figure eight. I’ve been to the West Coast. I’ve been to the East Coast. And each time I return to the center. I return home. It’s time to get centered again.

I look back on the two years I lived in Rock Island after college, and I see one of the great missed opportunities of my life. The Quad Cities is not a hopeless place for me to start a writing career. But improper perspective and a sour attitude can make the pearly gates look like Bangladesh, and anybody who knew me then would attest that my perspective was as skewed as a glass-eyed glaucoma patient.

I wasn’t trapped at the Isle of Capri. But that’s how I saw it. I wasn’t “out of the loop” as a writer in Rock Island. I just made it so. Of course, I had to break the shackles of habit and security to learn that, but I have learned it.

My Uncle Joel has lived in both corners of this country while the majority of his family remained rooted in the middle. He lived in Seattle for a number of years before moving to Florida. I don’t know how he does it. I desperately miss my family. I miss Rocky football. I miss Casino Rock Island. I miss the bleachers at Wrigley. I miss WINTER. Yes people. The real world has snow. You’re not of the world if you don’t shovel your walk at least once a year. I’m aching for the back spasms and numb toes.

My parents plan to take their vacation here in July. After a week of fishing and gator-baiting, I’ll be bringing my sharpened perspective and newly shorn skull home, ready for two-a-days and the climax of baseball’s regular season.

I really have no idea whether my life in The Cities will be any better this time around. I ate a big helping of crow on the grad school debacle. I could certainly be back on this site a year from now with another plateful.

But I’m optimistic. I daresay, I’m confident.

What do we Cubs fans always say? Next year is here? We’ve eaten almost a century’s worth of crow. We have a taste for it. And one of these years, we’re going to be right.

One of these years, I’m going to be right too.

Three months and counting…

Then it’s time to test the waters of the Mississippi River once again.

A Day Outside the World

“It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.”
-- Mohandas Gandhi

Of all the days in my week, Wednesday is the greatest. I get up early (around 6:45 AM) to fulfill my salebook duties at Books A Million during a wonderfully brief four-hour shift, and then spend my afternoon at the cinema or in the pages of a good book. All of this whets my appetite for the back-to-back brilliance of J.J. Abrams night on ABC. From eight to ten I experience the rapture of serial television at its best – the best show on television, Lost, followed by another perennial favorite, Alias. To say I look forward to these shows is to say that solitary prisoners relish daylight. After taking in this visceral feast, I send my weekly ABC stream-of-consciousness to my fellow Alias devotee, Jasmyne, and we exchange quips on the revelations of the show as well as our very un-Alias daily lives. As the most enlightened and dazzlingly intelligent of my peers, I anticipate our weekly correspondence as passionately as I do that night’s entertainment.

So, it would no doubt be apropos that any serious disruption of my existence would come on Wednesday. I am not a believer in fate, especially that trivial type so many of us interpret as God’s sense of humor, but sometimes life needs to give us a chance to huff and grumble “Go figure.”

With Life’s tongue firmly planted in its cheek, I woke up with a peculiar pain in my chest. As an asthmatic, I thought very little of this; chest pains are not unusual. I figured a few deep breaths would stretch my chest and alleviate the discomfort. I took a few hits of Albuterol, holding them in my lungs longer than usual, and then went to brown my breakfast bagel. As I waited for the toaster to return my morning meal, the dull pain persisted. I took more deep breaths, did a few side twists, and tried to force a belch. Nothing worked. I wrapped up my breakfast and headed to the car, curious but not concerned.

That’s when my breakfast tried to kill me. I tore up my bagel (I consume my bagels in chunks) and began to eat. Nothing seemed out of hand until I swallowed. Halfway to my stomach, my bagel rebelled. A piercing pain erupted in the left side of my chest, shooting into my shoulder as if I had been impaled by a spear.

“Ow! Damn!” I cried. “That’s not right.”

The part of my brain that commonly deflects the myriad of health problems with which I live suggested I make more of an effort at chewing before swallowing. I’m a man on the move and often disregard mastication in favor of the next thing on my to-do list. I threw in another bite and ground it to a smooth paste before taking another shot at swallowing.

“God! Fuck! What the hell!” I chucked the rest of my bagel into the backseat.

After arriving at the store, I sat in the parking lot considering my options. The CentraCare clinic sat just three doors down from the bookstore. I recently obtained health insurance from my employers, though my policy card and other relevant materials had not arrived yet. I felt some trepidation over the maneuvers I would have to make to square things between the clinic and my new phantom health insurance providers. Also, with the possibility of Graduate School on the horizon, my finances remain a concern. Losing work hours and adding medical expenses does not represent the ideal fiscal situation. But after making one more attempt at swallowing (“God damnit!”), I gave my manager a heads up and walked over to CentraCare.

My first moments at the clinic forebode a great deal of inconvenience over an ailment that inspired more curiosity than concern. At eight in the morning (just minutes after opening), numerous patients already populated the lobby. I approached the window and detailed my dilemma. The receptionist returned a perplexed expression, as if to say “Then what are you doing at this bare bones clinic?” I informed her of my insurance situation (“I have it, but I haven’t got the card yet.”) and with conspicuous skepticism she informed me that consultation began at $120, emphasizing the began at. I acknowledged her warning and assured her my coverage would take care of that lofty bill.

I filled out my paperwork in an isolated corner of the waiting room then looked around for a magazine without a fish or a deer on the cover, a search akin to Arthur’s quest for the Holy Grail. Fortunately, the nurse called my name almost immediately. Who knew that coming into a waiting room with chest pains resembles going to an exclusive club with Paris Hilton on your arm? There’s absolutely no wait. Unfortunately, those buzz words, “chest pains,” also mean a dearth on inconvenience and paranoia.

The nurse escorted me to a small cubby and pulled the curtain closed. I ran through my symptoms as she took diligent notes. When she seemed satisfied with the general picture, she pulled another curtain, revealing a bulky device new to my life experience.

“Okay,” she said. “Take your shirt off.”

Whoa. Buy me dinner first. The progression of this visit seemed to have skipped a step. I can count on one hand the number of times doctors have required the removal of my clothing. So stripping within the first five minutes seemed slightly alarming (and a little torrid). But I relented and lay back as the nurse stuck a dozen electrodes to my chest and ribcage for an EKG.

The results printed out normal, but the doctors had nothing to say about my ailments. They offered me some sort of G.I. cocktail, inclined to believe it was more likely indigestion than heart problems. The other option was a transfer to the emergency room. With my medical history (and renowned intuition about my personal health), I knew their vague diagnosis would fester until my growing paranoia manifested symptoms of its own. So, I succumbed to an uncharacteristic streak of hypochondria and selected the peace of mind I could only get from the ER.

Before making my trip across town I headed into the bookstore to grab some reading material. I had finished a book the night before (Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer), and dismayed by CentraCare’s limited selection of magazines, I didn’t want to take the chance of being stuck in a waiting room for several hours without something to flip through. So after updating my manager, I checked out a book (Wolves of the Calla, Stephen King’s fifth Dark Tower Book), and headed to Central Florida Regional Hospital.

I scoured the parking lot for an unrestricted spot (tow-truck scandals are all the rage in Central Florida). When I found one to my liking I gathered up my paperwork from CentraCare, grabbed my book, and headed to the big glass doors at the back of the main building. On my walk to the hospital, I unwisely avoided the sidewalks and found a soggy spot of lawn to drop my feet into. Damp socks and muddy tracks accompanied me into the ER.

After another ream of paperwork, I was taken to my own room where they immediately requested the Full Monty of me. As a trade for my wrinkle-free Dockers and blue polo, they offered a lovely bedsheet that tied around the neck and behind. The nurses propped me up on a gurney and I pulled out my book, leafing through the prologue.

After a few moments alone with my book, a scruffy grump with an uncanny resemblance to Willie Nelson entered the room. He introduced himself as Randy, my ER nurse. He asked me a dozen or so questions (all of which would be repeated dozens of times in the following hours), and I answered him with a blasé temperament; I did not feel ill, so all the very official hubbub felt rather ridiculous. My blood pressure was taken (130/70), several vials of blood were drawn from the fashionable new IV tube adorning my arm (all the kids are wearing them), and a bag of saline went up on the coat rack behind me. They stuck a constellation of nodes around my chest and ribs, and strung an oxygen tube over my ears and up my nose. The oxygen was meant to ease the chest pains, but it only succeeded at sending a fleet of flaky, irretrievable boogers into my nasal cavity.

The next hour would see visits from an endless parade of healthcare workers requiring either personal information or bodily fluids. Sometime during these festivities I found it prudent to ask how long this process would keep me in the hospital.

“Oh, you’ll be here through the night, hon.”

What? Through the night? But it’s Wednesday. Lost. Alias. Jasmyne’s e-mail. These commitments cannot just be brushed aside for some “atypical chest pains.” Of course, those objections remained in my head. Everyone was taking my ailment much more seriously than I, and I didn’t want to degrade their efforts. Plus, I was certain that putting one’s favorite television program above personal well-being could come off as slightly mad -- and that might require more testing.

Though this new wrinkle in my predicament concerned me, the nadir of my hospital stay came in the small prescription bottle Randy brought me as we waited for a room to open upstairs. He stood at the side of my bed and shook a small pill into the bottle’s cap. I opened my mouth to graciously receive whatever remedy these mad scientists had devised.

“Let me tell you what you’re going to do with this,” he said. “This goes under your tongue, and then you’re going to let it dissolve.”

Easy enough, I thought. I caught sight of the pill; it was no larger than a peeled sunflower seed. I lifted my tongue and tilted my head back. Randy dropped it in, and as the pill dissolved he stared at me intensely, as if considering a particularly bewitching riddle. After a long moment, as I cleared out the remaining crumbs from under my tongue, Randy stepped forward.

“How do you feel?” he asked, maintaining his pensive stare.

“Fine,” I answered. “What was that?”

“That was nitro. How’s the pain?”

“It’s fine.”

“On a scale of one to ten?”

“A three?”

Randy began a nod, but I sensed some disappointment.

“Two, maybe?” I said, attempting to salvage my original answer. “Two or three? Mostly two.”

In truth, all the effort meant to assuage my pain was unwarranted. I wasn’t in constant agony, as seemed to be the understanding of the staff. No, it was only under the influence of particularly unruly bagels that pain became an issue. Still, Randy didn’t seem satisfied with my “two.” He told me to hang tight, and he left the room. Moments later he returned with a white patch covered with sticky slime.

“How’s your head?” he asked.

Immediately, I became concerned. Did Randy forget which room he was in? Did he perhaps get me confused with some other patient? Perhaps this jelly strip was meant for some other condition. Perhaps it could damage me!

BACK! BACK, YOU WOOLLY NURSE!

“There’s nothing wrong with my head,” I said.

“Sometimes the nitro gives people a headache,” Randy said as he pressed the sticky paper on my chest. My head felt fine. Mere mortals got headaches, I thought. My mind was of sterner stuff. But it would only hold up so long.

After three hours in the ER, a bed cleared and I was transferred to my room for the evening. Compounding the embarrassment of the wires and tubes wrapped around me like lights on a Christmas tree, they refused to let me walk to my room. Instead, this fully-capable, and I dare say strapping young man was wheeled up to the cardiac wing of the third floor on a gurney. I protested this damper on my manhood by keeping my eyes up at a pre-rolling angle so as to make my displeasure with the gratuitous aid apparent to anyone I passed.

“Look at that kid,” I wanted people to say. “You needn’t wheel him to his room. I dare say he could fly up there if you’d let him.”

But no, I remained grounded. And the worst kind of grounded – bedridden.

As I projected my blasé attitude about the hospital, my concerns again returned to my Wednesday night television. I figured unless I were horribly blessed (which my mere presence in the hospital put in doubt) I would not have my own room. I already felt ridiculous being treated with such concern over an unusual, but admittedly minor pain. The only thing that could possibly make that worse would be an impending pissing match with a senior citizen over the remote control.

We reached the third floor and immediately rendezvoused with my Uncle Joel who had maneuvered a formidable bureaucratic labyrinth to hunt me down. He laughed when he saw the expression on my face; he knew exactly what I was thinking.

This is such bullshit.

He asked me how I was feeling only because that is what you ask somebody who is put in the hospital; he had the same negligible concern that I did once he saw my nonchalant attitude toward all the drama. Still, I did find evidence that at some point during the day he had become concerned. He got only halfway through the morning crossword puzzle. For any Deines, that signifies serious emotional turmoil.

After missing my room on the first trip down the hall (you worry me, Randy), we finally swung into room 305. My gaze darted to the ceiling, hoping I might see a pair of TVs, but alas my room sported only one. Next, my eyes fell on a pair of blue socks with white no-slip strips squiggling across their bases. Into the socks ran a pair of brown, crinkled legs.

Clearly, there was no chance that my roommate and I might share some serendipitous common bond in our love for the worlds of J.J. Abrams. My only hope would be that Lost’s eight o’clock start would be well past his bedtime.

Randy and Co. pulled alongside my bed, and with a few scoots of the booty I made the transition from patient to part-time resident of Central Florida Regional Hospital. From there, everything went downhill.

When I left CentraCare for the emergency room, I had an absurd thought.

God, it would be really embarrassing if this pain just went away all of a sudden.

As I’ve said before, growing up with asthma familiarized me with all kinds of peculiar chestal phenomena. All morning, even as I discussed the pain with the doctors at CentraCare, I halfway expected the pain to instantaneously disappear. It is not uncommon for me to feel an uncomfortable catch in my chest, but usually I can assuage the pain with a deep breath. I worried that once I got to the emergency room, I might do just that. I imagined the embarrassing scenario of standing up and saying “Sorry. Everything’s cool now. Forget I even came in.”

Later in the evening, after committing to at least one night in the hospital, I cursed myself for employing such a ludicrous line of thinking. By the time the inevitable nitroglycerin headaches penetrated my skull, I wanted nothing more than to be at home eating the pint of Ben & Jerry’s Fossil Fuel I purchased for J.J. Abrams night and wondering every time I saw Evangelline Lilly or Jennifer Garner onscreen whether my belly really needed another pint of ice cream. But unfortunately, I was stuck in room 305, bed 1 of Central Florida Regional Hospital until the staff was satisfied with their tests, and allowed me to go home.

I got to my room around 1, after spending nearly three hours in the ER. After a few minutes, my nurse for the afternoon, Teresa, arrived to introduce herself and treat me to my inaugural third floor BP check. After finishing with me, she wheeled the blood pressure machine around the curtain to visit my neighbor.

“Mister Bennucci? Mister Bennucci?” she called, to no response. After a moment the man behind the curtain moaned, apparently nudged by the nurse. “Mister Bennucci, do you speak English?”

“Uh… uh… poquito,” he moaned. The nurse deftly switched their conversation to Spanish as she worked to take his blood pressure as well.

As she did this, I glanced at program airing on the television: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca. While a perfectly tasteful choice, I wondered whether it had been Mr. Bennucci’s. With my roommate distracted, I decided to take my first shot at establishing media dominance.

The television control was a bulky plastic panel connected to the back wall by a cord. The panel consisted of two buttons – the television control and the nurse alert button. This seemed to be asking for trouble. I imagined a scenario where the two get confused.

“Can I help you?” the nurse would ask.

“No. Sorry. I was trying to get back to Jeopardy.”

The television situation was good news/bad news, the good news being that the hospital carried expanded basic cable, over 70 channels. The bad news was the lone button on the remote panel moved the channel up – and only up. I tempered my rapid-fire clicking style, after a few missed channels required an entire lap around the dial.

My usual Wednesday television concerns had blinded me to the other major television event that began just as I was getting settled into my room. As I clicked blindly through the channels, chatting with my Uncle Joel and joking about my get-up, I heard the mild murmur of a crowd of people. This was a distinct din; its noticeable lack of echo signaled an outdoor setting. I knew what it was before I even turned my head. I smiled at my uncle.

“There’s baseball on the television,” I said.

The Washington Nationals were facing the New York Yankees in the first televised Spring Training contest of the year. Sure it was only Spring Training, completely meaningless. But it was baseball, nonetheless. It made me smile, though it would be the last smile to cross my lips for a considerable length of time.

At around dinner-time, my cousin Courtney and her boyfriend stopped by. It’s one thing to have your Uncle come to see you. He’s a grown man, a brother of my mother, so it is easier to accept his presence without a loss of pride or dignity. But the first thing I thought when I saw her come into the room was “Shit. I wanted to take this damn tube out of my nose before she showed up.” Courtney is a peer, a confidant, somebody who I wish to see me only at my best. I suffered from the same type of thinking when my cousin Brian showed up at the Moline v. Rock Island football game my senior year of high school and found me bawling like an infant on the sidelines. Even though my image had already been spoiled for the moment, I urgently removed the tubes as soon as she turned her head.

At about this time, I also suffered the first hints of nitro in my temples. I presented a consistently positive, even charming front to my family, but the day began to wear on me. Though writers aren’t known for their get-up and go lifestyle, if anything has contributed to the lackluster proliferation of my writing it’s my allergic reaction to sedentary living. My days are usually divided into a half-dozen interests each given their due attention for an hour or two at a time. On a normal day I will write a new story for two hours, stop and revise an old one for an hour, watch a movie, do some research, then finish the day with some extensive reading. While it’s all in the same arena of activity, each of these different tasks tease a different part of my brain, keeping me from getting bored with one thing or another. Sitting in a hospital bed barely allowed me to deal with one of these.

Though I didn’t feel ill when I came in to the hospital, the combination of the nitroglycerin and the tubes, nodes, and IVs keeping me bound in one position for hours on end worked its fiendish malaise on my body, my nerves, and my patience. When rolling onto my side became the epitome of freedom, I knew the night did not portend great joy. I did a good job projecting a positive attitude throughout the day, so much so that my medical records described me as a “very pleasant, white gentleman.” (I obtained them for my ever-curious Aunt Becky, a nurse practitioner) But by the time I said good-bye to my family, I knew it would be a challenge to keep up that pretense.

The nitro headache became increasingly intense, like a crown of metal rods twisting tighter and tighter around my skull. The discomfort in my head started to manifest in other areas of my body. I’m fairly certain the expansion of my illness was psychosomatic; a devastating headache can make your entire person feel unwell. Nevertheless, for the first time all day, I didn’t feel right.

My thoughts from earlier in the morning, hoping my symptoms would hold up for the doctors’ inspection, fell to the wayside as I came to believe that perhaps I was, in fact, seriously ill. No matter how good one feels, the endless tests and questions (compounded by the required night in the hospital) made me question my well-being. As the night wore on, minor jumps in my blood pressure became more and more alarming, though my nurses shrugged them off as completely normal.

After trying to sleep off my headache for an hour, I woke just in time for my first battle with the hospital food’s after-effects. This came just minutes before Lost began. So instead of watching Lost on the television, I sat in the bathroom with a People magazine that featured an article on Lost. When I felt significantly hollowed out, I crawled back into my bed and kept one eye on the television while I pressed my hands to the sides of my head, hoping to hold it together.

Halfway into Lost the night nurse came in to introduce herself and my true nightmare began.

I should say up front that I am a chronic xenoglossophobic. For those unfamiliar with this condition, let me give you the quick breakdown. It is fear of foreign languages. Now, my xenoglossophobia is of a specific subset; I get extremely nervous when I cannot understand someone with a particularly heavy accent. My nightmare is continuously asking somebody of foreign descent to repeat themselves because I can’t understand what they are trying to say. Living in Central Florida, the transplant capitol of the world, this has become a common obstacle for me to maneuver.

So when a frumpy Asian lady walked up to my bed with the blood pressure monitor in tow, my phobia kicked into high gear. She introduced herself in intensely staccato, broken English. I struggle to recall her name, but I cannot forget her eye. She had a glass eye. While she addressed me, her other eye kept careful watch over Mr. Bennucci in the next bed. Before she even got the sleeve around my arm, I knew my blood pressure would have climbed again. When she finished (my BP was by this time 160/90), she pulled out a wrinkled piece of paper folded into fourths, held it inches from her face, and scratched my reading down. As she rolled the monitor around to Mr. Bennucci she apparently asked my condition by saying “Ok” upwards of thirty times.

Once Alias and Lost concluded (I barely remember either of them), the tragic ache of intense loneliness settled on me. The questions and tests had ceased, so there were no more nurses or doctors to charm (I do take pride in being a likeable chum when I can). My family had all left for the evening, and the concerned phone calls from folks back home had come to an end. The oppressive quiet of the cardiac ward reminded me that the lone person responsible for my well-being seemed to have come straight off a Han dynasty pirate ship.

I looked at the clock. My tests would begin around 7:30 the next morning. On the docket were a stress test, an echocardiogram, and a CT scan of my abdomen. As the time got later and later, the possibility of a good night’s sleep got slimmer and slimmer. Slowly, I slipped into my habit of Catch-22 insomnia – I know I’m not getting enough sleep, so I worry about not getting enough sleep, which makes it harder to sleep, etc. Nothing in this world frustrates me more than insomnia, and each successive blood pressure check confirmed my irritation.

Finally, at 1:30, I hit rock bottom. Sitting up in my bed, unable to focus on my reading, all I could think about was the fact that I was alone in a hospital and the doctors had some concern. For a long stretch of time, rational thought eluded me.

What if I’m just sitting here waiting for a heart attack? I thought. I’m alone in this room. I totally blew off my family when they called, telling them this was no big deal. What if I suffer a heart attack and die in the middle of nowhere (right then Florida felt like the middle of nowhere) with nobody by my side except the shady lady with the glass eye and Mr. Bennucci. My God there’s so much more I have left to do…

Suddenly, the localized pain for which I was being treated began to spread. It was impossible to breathe. My whole chest burnt. My back. My shoulder. My arms. Each time I tried to get a grip on my thoughts, some little devil inside me threw out a “But…” that only made things worse. I hit the red button on the remote control and called for the pirate lady.

She came in spouting her “Ok” chant, and I told her of the pain enveloping my torso. In the most brilliant moment of bedside diagnosis I have ever heard, she responded:

“Oh no.”

My amazement nearly killed me right there. She hustled out of the room and brought back the BP monitor to check me again. Seeing the numbers flash up in bold red lights did not help my condition any.

179/100, they read.

I didn’t ask whether that was high. I knew that was high, but I gestured obviously at the monitor to make sure she saw it. She did, glancing at it in a flash, before turning back to me. She pulled a vial of nitro out of her pocket, and dropped another pill on my tongue. The relief came slowly.

And it left me with a headache to last until my tests began the next morning.

I barely slept on Wednesday night. Strictly adhering to the theme of complete discomfort, I teetered at the edge of unconsciousness but could never quite make it over the edge. When I did begin to freefall, the pirate lady would sweep into the room with her BP monitor and pull me back. As I found myself once again awake and fully aware of my situation, my eyes would sweep about the ceiling as I tried to coax my eyelids shut. Still, something always came to the fore to add just a few more minutes of insomnia.

I blame Mr. Bennucci for a great deal of it. Still nothing more than a shadow against the curtain, he began a somewhat musical chorus of beckons that I can only assume came from the depths of REM sleep because not once did he buzz the nurse.

“Hi. HI. HAI! hi. HAI!” he sang from his bed. The song paused for a shuffle in the bed and a burst of gas, then resumed: “HAI. hi. HI. HI. HI!”

At around 3:00 in the morning, I resigned my quest for sleep after finally meeting my roommate face to face. I lay on my bed, forcing myself to turn onto my side, and noticed a gangly, feeble man wheeling his IV across the room like a decrepit wizard carrying spare-parts magical staff. Mr. Bennucci was a balding man with a wreath of wild, oily hair around the back of his head. The television illuminated his egg-shaped head as he passed underneath it. A patchy beard of gray stubble spread over his chin. Though his musical greeting had gone silent, the melody still had not cleared itself from his system. His mouth bounced open repeatedly in a nervous twitch (hi HAI HI!). Each twitch revealed a space line of jagged teeth pinching his upper lip to his face. A crack of light from the hall highlighted each and every gruesome bit of his person, like a horror-movie reveal of the main villain.

Eventually, Mr. Bennucci made it to the restroom, where more audible unpleasantness followed. I rolled over to my other side and tried desperately to shake the images I had just seen. But they stayed with me until the sun came up, and a nurse nudged me awake. She had blessings to offer, but they came with the usual qualifications.

The first blessing was they had no indication of cardiac malfeasance. But just to be sure they wanted to run a stress test, an echocardiogram, and a CT scan. In order to get the proper readings on some of these tests, breakfast would have to wait. How long? They couldn’t say.

“I’m sure by the time lunch comes around…”

Of course. But before that, I had a stress test to deal with.

It should be said before proceeding, that I love my grandfather. There is no man on this Earth that I admire more. But I resented the hell out of him on Thursday morning.

The Deines clan (my mother’s side of the family) has a distinct pallet, one that I did not consistently adhere to in my younger years. It usually involved lots of grease, lots of salt, and spices that could eat through a battleship. I found most of these foods hard to handle as a lad, but every time I was presented with a particularly difficult plate, I found my grandfather at my elbow spouting his standard endorsement of Deines cuisine:

“Make sure you finish that. It’ll put hair on your chest.”

Based on his diet, you can conclude two things about my grandfather. 1) He does possess a wonderfully hairy chest, and 2) he has a history of heart problems. With his cardiac history, he would clearly not be a stranger to the adhesive requirements of heart monitors and EKGs. So, why in the world would he endorse the propagation of hair on any body part? I’m completely befuddled.

At around 9:30 the stress test beckoned. A nurse brought a wheelchair to take me down to the first floor. The first thing I saw was a treadmill. The irony did not escape me; I was far too weak to manage a moderate walk downstairs, yet the test would force me to walk. To walk after lying in bed for nearly 24 hours. To walk when every nurse in the hospital had a mission to convince me I had forgotten how. To physically exert myself when such acts heretofore had been forbidden. I lifted myself out of the wheelchair with considerable apprehension.

But before the physical challenge began, I needed to be prepped. I dropped my gown to my waist, per my nurse’s orders, and she examined my chest delicately, as if it were covered with boils and sores. She shot me a quick glance.

“I’m gonna have to take these off,” she said, speaking of the adhesive pads for my heart monitor. I took a look, counting them off. There were eight of them. I gave her a nod, and braced myself on the examiner’s bed.

She yanked at the first one, but it only came off halfway. I saw the majority of my chest hair come off with the pad. Her second jerk pulled it completely off. It continued in a similar vein for eight more pads. Occasionally she got them off in one try. Most of the time not. And in between each ripping flash of pain, I watched my flesh shake from her efforts.

“OW! I need to GAH! do some AH! AH! freakin’ DAMN! sit-ups.”

When the nodes were gone, the extensive prep work for the stress test began. Since the removal of the nodes failed to completely excavate my chest, my nurse employed a razor to rub out two more asymmetric patches. When the hair was gone, apparently my skin also proved a nuisance. She poured a cool liquid over my chest then rubbed a rough towel across me until it dried and wore away any dry skin that might disrupt the sensors. Plugged in like R2-D2, I was wrapped in a spongy mesh that took care of that common nuisance we humans like to call breathing.

With my oxygen restricted and an empty stomach groaning, I stepped up on the treadmill to get to work. I walked for three minute intervals. After two minutes the nurse took a manual blood pressure reading. Then they boosted the speed and the incline -- rinse and repeat. By the end of the cycle, I could feel an ache growing in my quads. I wasn’t surprised. Lying in bed for a day straight, rising only for bathroom breaks, my muscles were bound to be shot.

Should have stretched first.

The stress tests came out ideal (though I did get the impression that I needed to be more active in my daily life) and I returned to my room. I hoped maybe the privilege of a meal might have been granted to me, but instead I found a liter of milky white liquid on my dinner tray.

“Your CT scan is up next,” my nurse informed me. “This is dye they need you to drink before they can do the scan. They say it tastes like Sprite.”

I wasn’t buying that for a second. I took a sip and confirmed the invalidity of their description. To a young man who used to drink Mountain Dew like an exile in the desert, a liter did not seem like too much to deal with, but as I tried to force the pseudo-Sprite down the one, lowly liter seemed endless. I did everything I could to trick myself. I poured the dye into Styrofoam cups. I sipped. I chugged. Eventually, the bottle emptied. I say the bottle emptied, because I think it felt sorry for me and tossed away its contents. I doubt I actually ingested the whole thing.

I notified the nurse that I had finished, and she passed the message on to the CT specialists. Apparently the ER was packed to the gills, so it would be some time before they could do my particular scan. In the meantime, a woman with a thick Russian accent wheeled another new contraption into my room. It was time for my echocardiogram.

Of all the things I experienced during my stay at Central Florida Regional Hospital, I found the echocardiogram the most fascinating. Another new jelly was introduced to my chest as the Russian nurse rolled the sensor underneath my ribcage. The nurse sat oblivious to me, concentrating exclusively on the screen. Since it seemed riveting to her, I took a glance myself.

For most of our lives the majority of us live with only minor awareness of the processes that keep us alive. Breathing, the beating our hearts, digestion. Most of them go unnoticed when everything is in working order. The heart is a curious thing. For 25 years it has beat religiously, incessantly, loyally, and aside from those vague thumps in my chests I am barely aware of it. Yet staring at this tiny black and white image, pounding away, I felt exhausted, unable to process that it was a part of me. This little fist of muscle, tenacious and unyielding, was at the core of my person. I literally saw my own heart, and I quickly realized how much more this resilient little muscle could take. I swore then and there to use it more.

At around noon the CT opened up for me, and while I was forced to ingest another pint or two of dye (this time it wasn’t diluted in generic soda) the scan went completely without incident.

All of my tests were completed by noon, and all indications showed I was free of any worrisome ailments. Unfortunately, the bureaucratic doe-si-doe finally bit me in the ass. It took another eight hours to get the tests results to my physician and get my discharge notice passed up to me.

My nurses gave me the order and I immediately hopped out of bed. My legs felt light and numb and still a little tender from the stress test, but I had been waiting to go home for half-a-day and would not wait another second. I dressed swiftly and went straight into the hall and informed my nurse of my departure. She offered to have me wheeled downstairs, but freedom had already enveloped me.

“I think I can make it,” I told her.

I bid my fans adieu and made my way outside, where a torrential downpour cleansed me of my trials as I walked to my car. As my glasses blurred with raindrops I kicked up my gait to a light jog. I only got about fifty yards before they began to ache and I was forced to take things slower than I would have liked.

I was amped to get away from the hospital, but little did I know how the effects of those two days would linger.

My erratic sleeping habits continue to plague me. The barren spaces on my chest itch like the devil as the hair grows back in, often causing me to unconsciously caress myself in awkward places like the grocery line. And I celebrated my return to work with a 12 hour day; I went home for the night with a pulled hamstring and some sort of allergic reaction that caused my hands to swell up. I don’t know what that was, but I like to blame the hospital.

It’s been a little over ten days since my escape, and I seem to finally be clear of all the mysterious side-effects of health care. Although one particular side-effect will probably remain for a very long time:

I’m gonna have to be hit by a Mack truck before I ever check into the hospital again.