That’s what we’re doing — if we can navigate the hordes of pasties jostling for seats, that is. If not, we’ll just call up Darryl Strawberry and rail crushed Pop Rocks in Washington Square Park. He’s cousins with Doc Gooden, who’s cousins with Gary Sheffield, who played left field like Kevin Mitchell, who held his girlfriend hostage and then cut off her cat’s head. Only one of the preceding assertions is false, and it’s not the one you’d hope.
Ignoring the fact that this fragile world is just rife — rife, I say! — with such saccharine abuse and feline homicide, some parents are reportedly shitting their Flyover State dungarees over the specter of Maurice Sendak’s grinning monsters giving little Tanner nightmares. Prompted by a Newsweek reporter to address the issue for the umpteenth time since test screenings launched last summer, Sendak said he’d assuage the concerns of Mom n’ Pop by telling them “to go to hell…if (the kids) can’t handle it, go home. Or wet your pants. Do whatever you like. But it’s not a question that can be answered.”
Sendak went on to elaborate that he couldn’t accept the “concentration on kids being scared, as though we, as adults, can’t be scared. Of course we’re scared. I’m scared of watching a TV show about vampires. I can’t fall asleep. It never stops. We’re grown-ups; we know better, but we’re afraid.”
It’s no stretch, then, to conclude that Sendak sees fear as an essential part of growing up — something he says American parents are remarkably reluctant to accept, and something he made a point to highlight in Where the Wild Things Are:
“We are squeamish. We are Disneyfied. We don’t want children to suffer. But what do we do about the fact that they do? The trick is to turn that into art. Not scare children, that’s never our intention.”
On a side note, the breezy, captivating NewsweekQ&A — which brought together Sendak, adaptation director/Labcabincalifornian Spike Jonze, and screenwriter/philanthropist Dave Eggers — revealed Sendak’s inspiration for his celebrated beasts:
“The monsters were based on relatives. They came from Europe, and they came on weekends to eat, and my mom had to cook. Three aunts and three uncles who spoke no English, practically. They grabbed you and twisted your face, and they thought that was an affectionate thing to do. And I knew that my mother’s cooking was pretty terrible, and it also took forever, and there was every possibility that they would eat me, or my sister or my brother. We really had a wicked fantasy that they were capable of that. We couldn’t taste any worse than what she was preparing. So that’s who the Wild Things are. They’re foreigners, lost in America, without a language. And children who are petrified of them, and don’t understand that these gestures, these twistings of flesh, are meant to be affectionate. So there you go.”
If you’re still at your desk reading this, really, shame on you. SHAME. Take a look around. It’s Friday. It’s probably raining. The free bagels are gone. Everybody with a spare excuse or sick day is at home sleeping off last night. And nobody in the office is actuallyworking except for The Bobs, who are cashing in your 2010 raise for telling the bossman how expendable you are.
So grow some balls, fake some swine flu, smoke some dope, and drop twelve hard-earned duckets to spend the afternoon being a kid again.
When we were wee bitty Dunces growing up in the Bay Area, we idolized our 49ers. This was before we knew (or cared to know) about collective bargaining, steroids, domestic violence and salary caps (or even ‘salaries,’ for that matter). They were Niners, and they kicked most everyone all over the field, and they were awesome.
We knew them all — even the offensive lineman. We had Joe and Jerry and Roger and John and Harris and Guy and Jesse and Steve (Wallace) and Steve (Young) and Charles and Eric and Ronnie and Keena and Brent and Tom and even Mike Fucking Cofer. The only question was whether we’d beat the Vikings, then the Giants, then later the Cowboys, and finally the Packers, in the NFC Championship Game. Sometimes we would and sometimes we wouldn’t, but we’d almost always get close (I vividly remember winning ‘only’ 10 games and missing the playoffs in 1991). Either way they’d riot in the Mission, which, though only a mile and a half from where I grew up (which wasn’t a perfect place, either), might as well have been present-day Juarez for all I knew (though it looked OK from the Laidlaw bus on the way school every morning).
The Niners, good guys that they were, played a charity basketball game in Kezar Pavilion every offseason. This was your chance to see these heroes in the flesh, up close and without all their armor. We were there. With much trepidation I approached John Taylor and asked for an autograph. He asked, “You got 10 bucks?” I said “N-noo” and started retreating to the bleachers. He hollered out something and I turned around and he signed my ticket stub. I still don’t know if he was messing with me or actually trying to extort 10 bucks out of an unemployed, half-grown person, but I’ve since concluded that this was the moment when I realized not all athletes were as great as I’d previously assumed they were.
Years passed and we grew somewhat and saw the Niners in a different light: They were still very good — not dominant, but very good — every year. But the cast had changed: Where there had been Joe, there was now Steve. We were OK with that because he, like Joe, tore up defenses without fail, which was nice. We also had Charles and Deion and Richard and Rickey and Ricky and William as new complements to Steve. It was this year — 1995 — when I became aware of the concept of ‘buying championships.’ But we were still the Niners, and kicked everyone’s asses, and it was awesome. A precocious tween with no bills, job, nagging wife or serious work ethic, I had all kinds of time to absorb every number in the Chronicle’s sports section. And soon it was decided: Ricky Watters was the new BEST PLAYER EVER. He scored five — FIVE! — touchdowns in one playoff game. He could run, catch, spin, high-step…the Man. Like Taylor, he came to the local basketball gym to play a charity game with other Niners, and we all got him to sign stuff and he was the coolest. I think he even threw down a dunk, though maybe not.
But Ricky, like the Niners of the mid-to-late 90s, never achieved greatness, though he was consistently very good, and occasionally spectacular. Then he bolted for Philly and had a couple decent seasons there and places beyond before retiring after, according to the omniscient and infallible Wikipedia, reportedly turning down Cleveland’s contract offer out of fear that terrorists would blow up the next plane he boarded (this being the age of 9/11 hysteria, and he being a man not paid for his intellect).
Recently, our thoughts returned to the guy. An extensive Google search followed. His modest personal website indicates he does promotional speaking, helps run football camps, and bankrolls a positive-vibe rap label.
But he also proffers up a glimpse into his personal life:
