Wednesday, December 31, 2003

This year's song: "He was playing real good for free."  

A new header for a new year. Taken at the last game of the World Series, at Shea Stadium in Flushing, NY on 10/30/00. The Mets are in the field, a Yankee at bat as the pitcher winds up and throws. At first I thought I'd use the ancient Shea scoreboard, but it didn't work as well as the infield. 

Paul Boutin: 101 Ways to Save the Internet. 

A story about stories inspired by Big Fish. 

Four years ago: "That's it for this millennium!" 

One of the cool things about New Years is we get a new year in the On This Day In list. Okay, it's not really that cool.  

The NY Times asks if CBS paid Michael Jackson $1 million for the 60 Minutes interview. "In essence they paid him" for the interview, the Jackson associate said of CBS, "but they didn't pay him out of the 60 Minutes budget; they paid him from the entertainment budget, and CBS just shifts around the money internally. That way 60 Minutes can say 60 Minutes didn't pay for the interview." 

Pet peeve: Print pubs that mis-spell Dan Gillmor's name. Every time I see it, and it happens a lot, I wonder what happened to all the editing that supposedly is backing up every print article. 

Are you your stories? 

Warning -- if you're the type of person who doesn't watch movie trailers and you haven't seen Big Fish, skip this section. On the other hand, I promise not to reveal anything about the movie that isn't in the trailer.

Tim Burton, the director and producer of Big Fish, is a master story-teller. Is there anything more to Tim Burton than his stories? Suppose I met him at a party and asked "Who are you really, I mean without the stories?" Could he give a meaningful answer? I suspect Burton is telling us, in Big Fish, no. Speaking through one of his characters he says "I can be who ever you want me to be."

My uncle, who died a few months ago, was a big story-teller. We used to joke when he'd start to tell a story that we'd heard dozens of times -- oh that's story number 278,291. In his stories, as with all our stories, he's the hero, he overcomes great odds to prevail, in a funny, lesson-learning way. Today my uncle is dead and guess what, there's nothing more to him now than his stories, and our stories about him. Do any of them have anything to do with who the true man was? See, that's really hard to say.

We seem to think there's more to a person, that you can sort of lift up the floorboard, and underneath the stories, find the soul, the essence of the person. But I'm beginning to wonder. Could it be that our purpose is to tell a story, and that the better lived a life is, the better the story that survives after you're gone?

The story behind this movie really gets you thinking. And that kind of story, for me, is the very best kind.