The Documentary Junkie Diaries

I love documentaries; almost any subject will do.  Space, science, nature, culture, disease, war, crime, etc.  I love them all and watch them often.  With the wealth and variety of that genre now available at places like Hulu and Youtube, I’ve decided to start keeping a running diary here cataloging what I watch and rating them based on the following:

The Re-enactment Cheese Factor:  hiring actors to re-enact historical scenarios is a relatively modern technique for documentaries.  Some do it well, others do it so badly it borders on comical.  This obviously won’t apply to every documentary.

The One to Ten Scale of Melodrama:  A lot of documentaries take subjects that are already considered horrific or sad by most and then up the ante with over-bearing music, slow motion, repetition, etc.   With one being the least and ten being an inexcusable crime against intelligence, I will use this scale to judge how much emotional manipulation documentary filmmakers present in their work.

The Bias Factor:  Nobody in the world is purely objective.  We’ve all got our angles.  I don’t blame filmmakers for presenting theirs.  There are, however, occasions where facts are ignored for convenience or flat out made up to make an argument.  That’s not a good thing.  I cannot abide people whose job it is to inform others on a subject who think the most important aspect of that is creating converts instead.

Camera Work:  Self-explanatory.

Narration:  Ditto.

Overall:  From zero to hundred percent, the final, overall quality of the documentary according to me. 

So there you have it.  I don’t know when I’ll get started, but I think I’ll have some fun doing it.

The Captain

The Official Detroit Red Wings Facebook page is having a contest, asking users to submit videos detailing why they’re a fan of Steve Yzerman. The prize is a seat in a Joe Louis Arena suite to live tweet a home game. Since I’m not anywhere near Detroit, submitting an entry to win free tickets would be useless, but in honor of #19 being inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame, I wanted to blog my reasons here.

I believe that the company a person freely keeps says a lot about their character. Who we choose to associate and spend our valuable time with is important. It’s not that I won’t tolerate anyone with different tastes or opinions, but I would not willingly become friends with someone who, for instance, was a member of the KKK.

This is a part of the reason why I am a Steve Yzerman fan. If you examine the list of people through the years who weren’t fans, you’ll notice a certain consistent trend among them: they are all very evil people.

Yzerman’s ascendancy and leadership in the NHL was once foretold by one of the greatest predictors of the future known to history. As Nostradamus once famously wrote: And it will come in a year containing the numbers one and nine, led by a man also bearing the same. A city of great manufacture will win victory in an arena that had not celebrated glory in many years.¹ What year did Detroit see her first Stanley Cup in 42 years? 1997. Who was their leader? Steve Yzerman. What number was he wearing? 19. His awesomeness was predicted centuries before he even lived.

But enough about that. Let’s take a look at some non-Yzerman fans and their contributions to the human race throughout history.

Adolf Hitler
Sure, he ruled and died before Yzerman was even born, but I think it’s safe to argue that, had the Captain been playing during his despotic regime and attempt to take over Europe and possibly the world, Hitler most decidedly would not have been a fan. Undoubtedly the most famous genocidal despot in all of human history, his name is synonymous with hate, evil and authoritarian intolerance.  Such is the nature of those who are not fans of Steve Yzerman and not a class of person with whom I would care to share anything in common.

"Yzerman? Zis name sounds vaguely Jewish. Efrybody knows ze Jews are bad mit sports."

 Osama Bin Laden

"Steve Yzerman make hockey like Jamal al-Habiq throw grenade at Infidel. He no good."

Jihadist, leader of Al Qaeda and would-be destructor of Western Civiliation, Osama Bin Laden is also not a fan of Steve Yzerman. This cave-dwelling kidney dialysis patient has been giving Islam a bad name for years with his extremist views and strict interpretation of the teachings of that faith.  He thinks all non-Muslims deserve to die at the hands of the only true believers, who will gladly surrender their own lives knowing the reward of 72 virgins awaits them in the afterlife.

Donald DeFreeze, a.k.a. General Field Marshal Cinque of the Sybionese Liberation Army

Kindapper, bank robber, killer, with all crimes being committed under the guise of

Overheard shortly before his death: "Steve Yzerman is a fascist insect that preys on the life of the people."

a political movement opposed to oppression.  Rising to notoriety in the 1970s with the kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst, who would eventually join the ranks of the S.L.A. as a partner in crime.  He also is a non-Yzerman fan and was suspected by the FBI of not even liking the sport of hockey at all.  One of the few domestic terrorists home grown right here in the USA, in 1974 he would take his own life following a sensational gun battle with police in Los Angeles, California.  A criminal starting at the age of fourteen, he died as he had lived the entirety of his adult life.  This is what happens when young boys do not have idols such as Yzerman to model their lives upon. In desperation and without guidance, they start their own armies, put on berets and go around acting like a bunch of idiots.

Sierra Leone rebels responsible for much suffering and torture

Not Steve Yzerman fans

The Revolutionary United Front spent nearly all of the 1990s terrorizing the citizens of the African country of Sierra Leone.  Amputations, intimidation and mass, indiscriminate slaughter plagued the impoverished nation for over ten years.  Independent sources have confirmed that not one member of that movement was a fan of Steve Yzerman.

Charles Manson

Crazed cult leader so influential over his followers, they would murder innocent people at his command.  He once went on the record in an interview with Geraldo Rivera and neither confirmed nor denied that he was a Steve Yzerman fan.  This might be because the normally hard-hitting Rivera did not even bring the subject of Yzerman up during the interview, but I’m pretty certain Manson would have said he wasn’t a fan had the reporter possessed the guts to pose the question.

Josef Stalin

"If Yzerman play hockey in Russia when I rule, I would have purged him and sent him to gulag. Is not even useful idiot."

 

Responsible for the torture, imprisonment, oppression and death of millions of communist dissidents during his rule, he personifies one of the 20th Centuries greatest tragedies.  Had he been a fan of Steve Yzerman he might have chilled out, gotten a little class and decided that maybe this Communism stuff isn’t such a great idea, halting endless amounts of suffering in the Soviet Union.

In conclusion, I believe I have adequately illustrated the massive shortcomings of people who are not Steve Yzerman fans.  So why am I a fan?  Because he’s Steve Motherpuckin’ Yzerman, that’s why.  Don’t be like the people above.  Don’t be evil.  Give it up for the Captain, #19 on the ice and #1 in our hearts.

¹ he didn’t really say this.  I pulled that out of my ass.

October

October is always a hard month for me. Thirty years ago, it delivered the worst day of my life. I was living in Ruidoso, New Mexico with my mother, older half-sister and little brother. My parents had divorced that year (or my father left us, depending on whose version of the story you’re hearing); we lived in a one-room hovel so small we all had to sleep on the same bed. I remember very little about it or the time we spent there, but what I do isn’t happy.

My mom drank heavily. When she was drunk, she wasn’t one of those funny or friendly drinkers that falls in love with everybody in the room. She was mean. She got violent. She beat us a lot. She neglected us routinely; we often went without eating for days at a time. When one of us brought lice home from school, instead of taking care of the problem, she would just snip the hairs on our heads where she found eggs. She didn’t wash our clothes or insist that we bathe or groom ourselves. She blew all our child support on booze. It was miserable.

My sister would sometimes dip into Mom’s purse after she inevitably passed out and steal a few dollars to take us to Dunkin’ Donuts and get something to eat. She did this knowing our mother would be angry and abusive when she discovered the missing cash, but she did it anyway. Her little brother and sister needed to eat and she did what she had to in order for that to happen. She often bore the brunt of my mother’s drunken violent outburst so to protect us from them; for that we owe her a lifetime of gratitude we couldn’t possibly repay in full.

When motherhood was a nuisance for her, Mom would lock us in a small closet until she felt like handling the bother. Lucky for us, my brother was a small four-year-old at the time and we would foist him on our shoulders and push him out the window so he could come around and unlock the door. We’d sneak outside and and hide in waiting for Mom’s daily alcohol-induced coma to arrive. Her passing out was a relief. At least we knew we weren’t going to get hit (and you know, that cheesy Suzanne Vega song is right. They really do only hit until you cry).

Eventually, our landlord could no longer tolerate the noise, the drunken fighting and constantly making the rent late, so he evicted us. Mom wasn’t happy and decided to let him know. We loaded everything we had – which wasn’t much, so it didn’t take long – into our white and yellow jeep and prepared to leave town. It’s funny, the little details you remember. I can’t recall the name of the school I went to, the street that we lived on, any friends that I had at the time, or even what Ruidoso looked like, but I remember every detail of that jeep. Mom assigned herself one final chore before hitting the road – she kicked over a can of paint inside the hovel and dropped a match, setting the place on fire. I don’t know how the landlord found out so quick and managed to follow so closely behind us, but there he was yelling for her to stop the car while waving a gun and threatening to shoot the jeep’s tires.

The police came and arrested her. I don’t know if he was from social services or what, but I can vaguely recall a nice man coming up to us and telling us that he had lots and lots of kids and that we were going to live with them. I guess they assumed there wasn’t a dad in the picture (there was, but only marginally at the time). When they found we had a father, they took us all to the station to wait for him to come get us. It was one of those small town, Mayberry-type stations where the jail was in the same room as the rest of the place. We sat there for what felt like forever listening to my mother scream and rattle the bars of her cell. It was probably only an hour or two at the most.

I remember looking out the window and seeing my father pull in to the parking lot. I cannot describe the feeling of relief that came over me. He never looked so huge. At long last, Daddy was finally coming to rescue us from this nightmare. I don’t think he knew how bad it really was. Sometimes, when people divorce, their children become weapons they use to hurt each other. We were those weapons to my mother and she routinely denied our father the right to see us. I doubt he would have allowed us to continue living the way we were at the time if he had a clue about it. He squished my brother and me in the back of his two-seater RX-7 and drove away, leaving my sister, who wasn’t his daughter and was going to be taken in by one of my mother’s sisters, behind. I wouldn’t get to see or speak to her again for almost twenty years.

That was the last time I saw my mother – in a jail cell having a fit of drunken hysterics nearing epileptic proportions. I don’t remember how my Dad told us; I think the staple lie for the first ten years or so was that she had cancer. In truth, once she’d been released on bail, she went somewhere quiet and shot herself with the .45 my father had given her to protect us following their divorce. I don’t know what happened to that gun, but if I had it, I’d name it Irony. For a long time I’d assumed she had merely shot herself in some remorseful drunken haste. A few years back, I found out she’d left a note behind. A note twenty seven pages long. I’ve been told that in it, she blamed everybody in the world but herself for her problems. She blamed her parents, her sisters, my father and, for all I know, me. I thought a long time about whether or not I should read it. In the end, I decided it would be uselessly upsetting. I don’t want to know what she was thinking in those final hours before she ended it all. It doesn’t matter now. Nothing is going to change or get better if I read it. It can only make things worse. All that matters is that she’s gone. The reasons are pointless details that I’m better off without.

Over the years, I’ve fluctuated from anger and sadness, confusion and depression on the subject of my mother. I had to learn too young what death meant and it has left a lot of scars and brought even more unhappiness and pain. It’s hard to reconcile a loss like this; you spend a lot of time blaming yourself. If only I had been a good little girl, Mommy would have wanted to live for me. If I had worked harder in school or did my chores around the house better she wouldn’t have wanted to go. Maybe I should have told her I loved her more. Did she even know? Oh God, I hope so. These are things you say to yourself over and over, hoping you’ll go numb from repetition. You never do. All you have is a laundry list of unanswered questions that won’t stop nagging and the hurt that comes with it.

In 1990, an otherwise forgettable movie called Flatliners came out. In case you haven’t heard of it, it’s about a group of medical students who clinically induce death on one another and then bring each other back to life. After they all go through this, they begin having visions of spooky things from their pasts; the ghosts of people they’d wronged would haunt them. There was a scene in that film that was particularly moving for me. Julia Roberts played a woman whose father was a heroin addict that had commit suicide when she was a girl. Like me and countless others, she blamed herself for his death. There’s a part in the movie where he comes back, tells her he’s sorry and that it’s not her fault. They hug and cry and say good-bye and she finally shakes his ghost.

That scene hit me hard. I wanted those five minutes, too. I wanted the good-bye I never got to say. I’ve thought long and hard about how I’d react if I ever had it. Would I be angry? Happy? Sad? Glad to see her? Or would I wish she would just go away once and for all? When it’s all said and done, it doesn’t matter because it’s never going to happen, but I can’t help but wonder. While reflecting on the thirty years that had gone by last month, I finally figured it out. I know what I would say. Three words. That’s it. Words that, once I genuinely believed them in my heart to be true, I found a peace that I’d never known in my life before. One brief sentence that sums up all those decades of tears, anger, rage and loss that have finally allowed me to put my mother to rest: I forgive you. I’d like to think that’s what she’d want to hear.