bush, happy as a clam

President George W. Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr., enjoy a chuckle together at Bush’s comment, “The economy is fixed, now, and we still have another half-hour scheduled. What else can we fix today?”

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke (foreground) is slow to catch the rich irony and respond, much as he has been slow to recognize the threat of inflation to our overall economic stability. Moments later, after this photo was taken, Bernanke had a moment of recognition and laughed last and best (about the irony; not the inflationary threat).

historic moments in NCAA basketball bracketology

Here we see an artist’s rendering of Captain Ahab at his moment of decision of which team to choose in some long-forgotten game involving an eight-seed versus a nine-seed in some NCAA Western regional of yore. The entire story, of course, is not depicted, however.

The legend goes that Ahab—in trying to make correct choice for this game in his NCAA basketball tournament brackets used the common tools that all men do. He recalled his rote knowledge of brief snippets of highlights of the teams playing he had seen on ESPN’s Sportscenter. He analyzed the coaches overall records, especially their NCAA tourney history. He compared RPI and strength of schedule. He also considered the overall strength of their respective conferences. He looked at the teams’ won/lost records, including their quality wins against ranked teams and their losses of games against inferior teams. He analyzed their schedules and looked for performances against common opponents.

Ahab factored in the previous performances in the NCAA tournament of the players on the teams, where applicable, and the players’ overall talent and experience. He also considered the “X” factors, such as whether the site of the game was close enough to the teams’ respective campuses that they would have a fan-base in attendance.

Finally, after two solid hours of research, he reached the conclusion he should have reached 120 minutes earlier and had his crew paint the names of the teams on either side of a whale. Then, as we can see depicted here, he stood in the prow of his whaling boat, blindfolded himself, and prepared to let the harpoon aid in his choice.

a country for an old dude

Earlier this year we went and saw the movie No Country for Old Men. Jimbo’s girlfriend didn’t care for it. I thought it was one of the best movies I had ever seen. When it won four Oscars last Sunday night, it occurred to me that someone must have agreed with me.

I’m pretty sure that Jimbo’s girlfriend considered this just to be another shoot ‘em up movie with a lot of guys shooting at other guys and a lot of dead bodies lying about, and this is not the genre (if you’ll pardon my French) of movie that she enjoys. However this movie was telling Jimbo a story that was a lot more complicated than that.

Oscar winner Javier Bardem, a Spanish actor I had never seen before, plays a character named Anton Chigurh. His haircut looks like mine did twenty-five years ago. Chigurh is a reasonably emotionless killer who occasionally gives his prey a fifty-fifty shot at survival by means of a ceremonial coin toss. Chigurh walks through this movie, playing a grim-reaper-type, just as surely as the character Death in the movie The Seventh Seal.

Josh Brolin, playing a welder named Llewelyn Moss, wanders across a massacre, which was the aftermath of a drug deal gone bad. Among the carnage, he finds a survivor. Unable to get an answer from him as to who did all the killing, Moss finds a blood trail and follows it to the one more dead guy and a bag with 2 million bucks in it. Moss takes home the money and becomes the target of Chigurh, who is charged with recovering it.

Although Moss and Chigurh are relatively young men, the perspective of the story comes to us from Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, who is played by Tommy Lee Jones. Bell gives us a narrative of a world gone wild—a place and time that has passed by decent and normal people. Bell is nearing retirement and laments a time when life was measured and predictable. Hence, the “old men” reference in the title.

Chigurh is the symbol of an end that comes and gets all of us eventually. Some of us, like Llewelyn Moss, put up a struggle and deny the inevitability, as he shoots it out with the mop-topped grim reaper and they seriously wound each other.

By the way, Jimbo will never again suture a six-inch gash in his leg with a needle and thread without thinking of the scene in this movie where Chigurh does exactly that after being wounded in a shootout with Moss. Eventually Chigurh gets the upper hand and Moss is discovered dead on the floor of a motel room.

At the investigation of Mosses murder, Bell discusses with another local sheriff the decline of civilization. The sheriff describes to Bell another similar crime scene he has seen recently, and asks rhetorically how is it possible to prepare for that kind of violence?

In the next scene, Bell visits a relative, presumably an ex-lawman, and announces his plans to retire. They discuss a similar crime scene to the one he had discussed at Mosses murder site. The crime they discussed this time, however, had occurred one hundred years earlier.

Having the benefit of perspective of the proverbial old men in the movie, it occurred to me that it is not the times that are changing-- rather, it is our perspective of the times. We carry with us a remembrance of times past and times largely forgotten except by ourselves. We seem to be prone to lamentations of the way things used to be. I remember my father used to do that and I used to think that it was just because he was old.

Anyway, the movie had an extremely abrupt ending. Bell was sitting at the breakfast table telling his wife about two dreams he had. Then, boom, the movie was over. At the time, I thought it was the worst way to end a movie as I had ever seen. Having had a chance to mull it over, I think my initial thought was wrong.

I don’t dream much, but that night I had a dream. I don’t remember much about my dream, but I think I had a much clearer understanding.

Then I woke up.

And that is the way things happen in Jimbo’s world.